notional

English

Etymology

From notion + -al.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈnəʊʃənəl/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈnoʊʃənəl/
• Rhymes: -əʊʃənəl

Adjective

notional (comparative more notional, superlative most notional)

1. 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.

   • 2009, Michela Wrong, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower:

     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. Speculative, theoretical, not the result of research.

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

3. (Maine) Stubborn.
4. (linguistics) Having descriptive value as opposed to a syntactic category.
5. (finance) Used to indicate an estimate or a reference amount
   • 2009 March 11, “Gold inches up on bargain hunt, ETF hits record”, in Ninemsn:

     Gold traded at $909.00 an ounce, up 0.2 percent from New York's notional close of $906.65 on Wednesday.

   • 2009 March 3, “Harvard Accepts Higher Debt Costs as Bankers Profit”, in Bloomberg:

     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.

6. (informal) Full of ideas or imaginings.
   • 1995, Walter D. Edmonds, In the Hands of the Senecas, page 137:

     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.

Synonyms

• (of a notion): conceptual, ideal
• (being a notion): conceptual, ideal, imaginary

Derived terms

• nonnotional
• notional amount
• notionalist
• notionality
• notionally
• notionalness

Translations

of, containing, or being a notion

• Bulgarian: умозрителен (bg) (umozritelen), абстрактен (bg) (abstrakten)
• Catalan: nocional
• Finnish: kuvitteellinen (fi)
• French: notionnel (fr)
• Galician: nocional
• Spanish: nocional

speculative, theoretical

• Bulgarian: въображаем (bg) (văobražaem)
• Catalan: nocional
• Finnish: kuvitteellinen (fi)
• Galician: nocional m or f
• German: rein gedanklich, theoretisch (de), spekulativ (de)

linguistics: having descriptive value

• Finnish: kuvaileva (fi)
• French: notionnel (fr)
• Galician: nocional

finance: estimated or reference

• Finnish: viite- (fi)
• French: notionnel (fr)

Noun

notional (plural notionals)

1. A fake company used as a front in espionage.
   • 2012, Joseph C. Goulden, Peter Earnest, The Dictionary of Espionage: Spyspeak Into English, page 157:

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