notional
/ˈnəʊʃ(ə)n(ə)l
/adjective
1Existing as or based on a suggestion, estimate, or theory; not existing in reality: notional budgets for hospital and community health services...
- All Italian property owners are liable to pay income tax based on the notional letting value of the property.
- Hence, one creates these surchargeable contributions, which are a notional figure, based on what it would have been.
- In a formal sense, of course, the theory refers to some notional riskless rate.
2 Linguistics Denoting or relating to an approach to grammar which is dependent on the definition of terminology (e.g. ‘a verb is a doing word’) as opposed to identification of structures and processes.The notional definition of a noun does not cover such words as action, existence, happiness, temperature that belong to the noun form class on formal criteria.
Derivatives
notionally
/ adverb ...- Some Labor figures dismiss this poll, questioning its methodology, and especially doubting if the preferences would fall the way Newspoll has notionally distributed them.
- To the modern eye, it looks like a fairy-tale notionally transferred to a modern setting, based on a simple narrative system of dualities: good and bad, country and city, sweet blonde wife and wicked brunette mistress.
- This haunting work, though notionally concerned with attempts at intrusive human settlement on Mars, is pervaded by a sense of solitude and loss, particularly with regard to the fragile and doomed Martians.
Origin
Late Middle English (in the Latin sense): from obsolete French, or from medieval Latin notionalis 'relating to an idea', from notio(n-) 'idea' (see notion).