notional

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   Of, containing, or being a notion

   Of, containing, or being a notion; mental or imaginary.

   • Near-synonyms: conceptual, fancied, fanciful, ideal
   • The idea that a rooster says cock-a-doodle-doo rather than ooh ooh-ooh ooh-ooh is socially conventional even though its sound correspondence is at heart notional.
   • He was now receiving reports of a second suspect Anglo Leasing deal, this time for the notional provision of a state-of-the-art police forensic laboratory.
2. 2

   Speculative, theoretical, not the result of research.

   • This paper proposes a notional Federated Identity Management (FIM) architecture.
3. 3

   Stubborn.

4. ›+ 4 more definitionsshow fewer

   1. 4

      Having descriptive value as opposed to a syntactic category.

   2. 5

      Used to indicate an estimate or a reference amount

      • Gold traded at $909.00 an ounce, up 0.2 percent from New York's notional close of $906.65 on Wednesday.
      • Under the agreements, Harvard paid the banks fixed interest rates on a total notional amount of $3.52 billion in exchange for floating-rate payments from them.
   3. 6

      Full of ideas or imaginings.

      • She knew what Pete would say if she told him about it — he would say she was getting notional; and she did not want Pete to think of her as a notional woman. Notional women sometimes had a hard time marrying unless they had money.
   4. 7

      A fake company used as a front in espionage.

      • Numerous CIA notionals, created to counter Communist organizations in Western Europe during the Cold War years, remain active and unrevealed.

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