apparitional comes from apparition + -al, from Latin appāritiō ('an appearance'), from appārēre ('to appear'), from ad- ('to') + pārēre ('to be visible'). Morphologically, the word is transparent: -al is attached to the older base named in the history, so the modern form packages an inherited or borrowed stem inside a later English derivative. In modern use, the adjective sense is "of or resembling an apparition; ghostly or spectral", which keeps the etymology connected to the word's present dictionary value rather than treating it as a merely historical label. The wider word family includes related English forms such as apparition, appear, apparent, showing how the same base continues to support neighboring English vocabulary. The principal historical forms in the chain include Latin appāritiō, Latin pārēre, which anchor the explanation in named linguistic material.