Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
- Used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning "of or pertaining to"; adjectival suffix appended to various words, often nouns, to make an adjective form. Often added to words of Latin origin, but used with other words also.
Often redundant to the use of -ic alone; for example, mythic and mythical are identical in meaning. Likewise for -etic, as in phonetic and phonetical. For words that naturally end in -ic such as magic and statistic, the addition is only of -al.