regal

Meanings

Adjective

• Of or relating to royalty.
• Befitting a king, queen, emperor, or empress.
• Befitting a king, or emperor.

Noun

• A small, portable organ whose sound is produced by beating reeds without amplifying resonators. Its tone is keen and rich in harmonics. The regal was common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; today it has been revived for the performance of music from those times.
• An organ stop of the reed family, furnished with a normal beating reed, but whose resonator is a fraction of its natural length. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries these stops took a multitude of forms. Today only one survives that is of universal currency, the so-called Vox Humana.

Origin

• From Middle English regal, from Old French regal ("regal, royal"), from Latin rēgālis ("royal, kingly"), from rex; also regere. royal, and real. Cognate with Spanish real.
• From Middle French régale, possibly from Old French regol ("a gutter, channel").