Pursual comes from pursue + -al; pursue comes from Anglo-French pursuer, Old French poursuir, from Vulgar Latin prosequere, from Latin prosequi ('to follow after'). The historical chain includes Old French poursuir, Latin prosequi, and Latin sequi. The quoted older sense, "to follow after," supplies the immediate semantic anchor for pursual. The formation is best read as suffixal and borrowed: the word pursual carries its older form-history into a compact English lexical shape. In present English it is used as a noun, "the act of pursuing or following". Related English forms include pursue, pursuit, pursuer, and pursuance. The result is a noun whose etymology preserves both the older form and the later English specialization.