Affectual

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Pertaining to feelings or emotions and their expression
2. Connected with the experience or outward show of emotions
3. Having a role in emotional response or the outward manifestation of feelings

Etymology: "Affectual" is an English adjective built from the Latin "affectus," which meant a mental state or disposition, a feeling or desire. The Latin noun comes from "afficere," "to act upon or affect," itself formed from "ad-" ("to") and "facere" ("to make or do"), so the underlying idea is something done to a person's mind. English took the noun "affect" in the sense of an emotional state, and "affectual" follows the pattern of adjectives like "intellectual" and "habitual," adding the suffix "-al" to mean relating to or characterized by that thing. The result is a word that sits close to "affective," which is the more familiar term in psychology, but "affectual" points more directly at the observable side of feeling: the expressions, gestures and displays through which emotion becomes visible to others. The Latin root's sense of something acting on the mind explains why the word covers both inner feeling and the outward signs that reveal it.

Synonyms: emotional, sentimental, affective