a suffix with the general sense “of the kind of, pertaining to, having the form or character of” that named by the stem, occurring in loanwords from Latin (autumnal; natural; pastoral), and productive in English on the Latin model, usually with bases of Latin origin (accidental; seasonal; tribal). Originally,was restricted to stems not containing an -l- (cf.); recent lapses in this rule have produced semantically distinct pairs, as familiar and familial. Cf.