Construal is a noun that means interpretation.

Our word of the day comes from the Latin word construere (con stru WHERE ay) meaning, ‘to build.’ When we construe something we care analyzing how it is built. This also applies to the way a sentence or phrase is built.

After the mayor’s speech, he was immediately worried about the construal of his words, and for good reason. The way those words were interpreted would later come back to haunt him.