Talk:virial

That's definitely not just a misspelling of viral! See for example Equation of state

Virial
I have added a proper defination of Virial. Please let me know if this suits your needs/expectations. Dr.Franich

Etymology
I couldn't find any. The most common etymonline, for example, cites "No matching terms found." As well as a handful of other dictionaries. Suggestions? Josh L. (talk) 06:08, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Added. I'm not sure whether the "-al" got added in the Latin or the English, though I would give good odds that it's a fairly recent scientific coinage. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:37, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Etymology 2
No,no,no, Chuck. As you yourself said, -al could've been added "by similarity": factorial etc. I did come across an "adjective" notion in one of those dictionaries I looked up in, but I doubt if it hadn't been added there by certain (mistake?) speculation, ok? Josh L. (talk) 07:58, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
 * The -al ending forms adjectives from nouns in English. It's derived from the Latin ending -alis, which does the same thing. Whether there was a Latin word *virialis or someone coined virial by combining the Latin word with the English ending, it's likely the adjective came first. But regardless, you will find lots of uses of virial as an adjective: virial coefficient, virial equation, virial theorem, etc. I based my definition on a textbook that I found in my Google Books search- I didn't just make one up so we would have something to go with the noun. The etymology doesn't say which came from which, just that they both ultimately came from Latin by one route or another. It also was suggested by that textbook, though I know enough about the ways scientific terminology is derived to be very confident that it's correct, independently from that. I'm still not sure if you understand how our entries work, since some of your comments don't seem to make much sense unless you're missing something. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:29, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
 * «...you will find lots of uses of virial as an adjective: virial coefficient, virial equation, virial theorem, etc.» Absolutely not. This usage is a usage of a noun as attributive: cf. box-office, "train ticket", weather forecast, name it. :) The presence of -al may imply, but have no obligation to mean the existence of an adjective. When we pick, for example, animal, we may find an adjective usage/meaning, I didn't check, but may find not. When we consider English, we should fully realise that the presence of a word is never due to the morphology - but to the use in the language. Attributives and adjectives are far not the same, you know: adjectives, for example, all can be nominalised ("the poor"); they also can be used after the noun, or after a pronoun ("something special"). Of course we should remember the discrepancy in our usage of the word "adjective": as of syntax, it may mean the role of a word in the structure of the sentence. However, the adjective as a part of speech should imply the entire distribution — otherwise we'd had to annex every article about a noun with a section about its adjectival usage and thus refer to the noun (to every noun) as "adjective" as well. «"Sun light" → "Sun": adjective...» — eh? :) Josh L. (talk) 09:07, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm quite familiar with the difference between attributively-used nouns and genuine adjectives. In this case, the forms seem to me to be capable of interpretation either way. If you think the adjective sense is wrong, feel free to take it to WT:RFD, but I would advise against giving the same condescending lecture about attributive use of nouns that you just gave me, since we spend a great deal of time there on such things and it's often a central topic of discussion. Chuck Entz (talk) 10:49, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's wrong — I have a doubt(!). Josh L. (talk) 11:33, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Crossreference
«Wikipedia has an article on: Virial» What? The Virial is a mere redirection page there; Wiki has a Virial theorem one. Josh L. (talk) 06:48, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

RFC discussion: June 2007–November 2009
Tagged but not listed. --Connel MacKenzie 21:13, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
 * The definition may or may not be understandable for mechanics --Volants 16:59, 17 November 2009 (UTC)0