Spherical comes from Late Latin sphaericus, from Ancient Greek sphairikós, from sphaîra ('ball, globe'), + the English suffix -al. The historical chain includes Late Latin sphaericus and Ancient Greek sphaîra. The quoted older sense, "ball, globe," supplies the immediate semantic anchor for spherical. The formation is best read as suffixal, compound, and borrowed: the word spherical carries its older form-history into a compact English lexical shape. In present English it is used as a adj, "shaped like or relating to a sphere". English derivatives include spherically and sphericity; related English forms include sphere, spheroid, and hemisphere. The result is a adj whose etymology preserves both the older form and the later English specialization.