definitional

D2E1F4I1N1I1T1I1O1N1A1L1
UK[ˌdɛfɪˈnɪʃənəɫ]

adjective

Of or relating to a definition.

UncommonScrabble 16

Meanings

adjectivedefinitional (not comparable)
  1. not comparableOf or relating to a definition.

    Individually, some of these definitions fall into the common definitional trap of being overly precise.

    2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 7
    2 more examples

    The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ruled in 2018 that lab-grown diamonds are included in the same definitional universe as mined diamonds but warned against the use of terms like "natural" in marketing that confused the two categories.

    2020 March 10, Oliver Milman, “Are laboratory-grown diamonds the more ethical choice to say 'I do'?”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 25 Aug 2023

    Some researchers have suggested that sentences like (27) may be ungrammatical because they are not in typical usage[…]. This comes down to a definitional issue of what it means to label a string as “grammatical”. If “grammatical” means “generated by the grammar in normal situations,” then such sentences are clearly ungrammatical because we can’t generate such sentences in normal language usage. Alternatively, if “grammatical” means “all of whose syntactic components are part of the grammar,” then such sentences are grammatical.

    2025, Edward A. F. Gibson, “Preliminaries: Components of Language Structure” (chapter 2), in Syntax: A Cognitive Approach, MIT Press, →DOI, →ISBN, page 37
  2. not comparableUsed to define something.

Origin

  1. Englishdefinition
  2. Proto-Indo-European*h₂el-
  3. Proto-Indo-European*h₂élisder.?
  4. Englishdefinitional

From definition + -al.

Full word history & related roots →

Translations

Danish definitorisk
  • definitoriskTranslations
French définitionnel
  • définitionnelTranslations
Polish definicyjny
  • definicyjnyTranslations
Portuguese definicional
  • definicionalTranslations
Spanish definicional
  • definicionalTranslations
Cite this entry
APA

definitional. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/definitional

MLA

“definitional.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/definitional. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “definitional,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/definitional.

Source: definitional on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.