Word.ws English Dictionary

coronal

/ˈkɒɹənəl/US/ˈkɔɹənəl/

coronal adjective: relating to a crown or coronation. Also the alternative form of cronel.

Adjective

coronal (comparative more coronal, superlative most coronal)

  1. Relating to a crown or coronation.
    • The law and his coronal oath require his undeniable assent to what laws the Parliament agree upon.1649, J[ohn] Milton, ΕΙΚΟΝΟΚΛΆΣΤΗΣ [Eikonoklástēs] […], London: […] Matthew Simmons, […], →OCLC
  2. Relating to the corona of a star.
    • The coronal light during the eclipse is faint.1878, William de Wiveleslie Abney, A Treatise on Photography
    • Coronal holes are darker, cooler regions of the sun's atmosphere, or corona, containing little solar material. In these gaps, magnetic field lines whip out into the solar wind rather than looping back to the sun's surface. Coronal holes can affect space weather, as they send solar particles...2013 July 28, Megan Gannon, “Spacecraft Sees Giant 'Hole' In the Sun”, in news.yahoo.com, retrieved 29 Jul 2013
  3. Relating to the corona of a flower.
  4. Relating to a sound made with the tip or blade of the tongue.
  5. Relating to the coronal plane that divides a body into dorsal (back) and ventral (front).
  6. Relating to the external (supragingival) portion of the tooth.
  7. Relating to the corona glandis.
  8. (forensic medicine) Relating to a coroner's duties and findings.
    Synonyms:
    coronial

Noun

coronal (plural coronals)

  1. A crown or coronet.
    • Therfore aryse and dresse the thow gloton / For this day shall thou dye of my hand / Thenne the gloton anone starte vp and tooke a grete clubbe in his hand / and smote at the kynge that his coronal fylle to the erthe1485, Sir Thomas Malory, chapter V, in Le Morte Darthur, book V
    • That shall embellish more your beautie bright, / And crowne your heades with heavenly coronall, / Such as the Angels weare before Gods tribunall!1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
  2. A wreath or garland of flowers.
    • The bowl is in the Renaissance style, with winged figures supporting coronals and wreaths of flowers, and on the edge is an emblematic figure pouring out water.1862, Edward McDermott, The Popular Guide to the International Exhibition of 1862, Cambridge University Press, published 2014
    • Where, darker for the sky's unclouded dome, The waves took sudden coronals of foam1911, George Sterling, Duandon
  3. The frontal bone, over which the ancients wore their coronae or garlands.
    • Oxycephaly results from the fusion of both coronal sutures and of the sagittal suture; trigonocephaly from a fusion of both coronals; […]1947, Hans Grüneberg, Animal Genetics and Medicine, page 190
  4. A consonant produced with the tip or blade of the tongue.
    • This structurally accounts for a number of phenomena that treat coronals asymetrically with respect to other places of articulation.2011, Mirco Ghini, Asymmetries in the Phonology of Miogliola, page 34

Also used as

coronal is also the alternative form of cronel.

coronal is also the obsolete form of colonel.

Synonyms of coronal

Forms of coronal

Adjective
comparativemore coronal
superlativemost coronal
Noun
pluralcoronals

Origin of coronal

From Middle English coronal, from Anglo-Norman coronal, from Latin corōnālis (“related to a crown”), from corōna (“a crown”).

Words formed from coronal

Phrases with coronal

Questions about coronal

What does coronal mean?
Coronal means relating to a crown or coronation.
What part of speech is coronal?
Coronal can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce coronal?
Coronal is pronounced /ˈkɒɹənəl/ (UK).

Words near coronal in the dictionary

  1. coronagraphy
  2. coronahoax
  3. coronaholic
  4. coronaholics
  5. coronaing
  6. coronal
  7. coronal hole
  8. coronal holes
  9. coronal mass ejection
  10. coronal mass ejections
  11. coronal plane

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: coronal (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-coronal1.wav.

Cite this entry: “coronal.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/coronal. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.