Adjective

(-)

Of, resembling, relating to, or consisting of a name or names.

Assigned to or bearing a person's name.

Existing in name only.

a nominal difference

* (rfdate)

Nominal attendance on lectures.

(philosophy) Of or relating to nominalism.

(senseid) Insignificantly small; trifling.

He gave me only a nominal sum for my services.

Of or relating to the presumed or approximate value, rather than the actual value.

The nominal voltage is 1.5 V, but the actual figure is usually higher.

(finance) Of, relating to, or being the amount or face value of a sum of money or a stock certificate, for example, and not the purchasing power or market value.

(finance) Of, relating to, or being the rate of interest or return without adjustment for compounding or inflation.

(grammar) Of or relating to a noun or word group that functions as a noun.

This sentence contains a nominal phrase.

(engineering) According to plan or design; normal.

We'll just do a nominal flight check.

Apart from the slightly high temperature, all the readings from the spacecraft are nominal .

(economics) Without adjustment to remove the effects of inflation; contrasted with real.

My employer does not understand how low my nominal wage is.

The nominal GNP of this country is pretty low.

* 1991 , Richard J. Gilbert, Regulatory Choices: A Perspective on Developments in Energy Policy , page 267,

Comparisons of the costs of the Diablo Canyon plant with other nuclear power plants can be misleading because the available cost data are in nominal dollars and therefore include the toll of inflation over the construction periods.

* 2001 , Erich A. Helfert, Financial Analysis: Tools and Techniques: A Guide for Managers , page 467,

This simple process allows us to convert nominal dollars into inflation-adjusted real dollars.

(statistics, of a variable) Having values whose order is insignificant.

Adjective

(-)

Existing in act or reality, not just potentially; really acted or acting; occurring in fact.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-07, author=(Gary Younge)

, volume=188, issue=26, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Hypocrisy lies at heart of Manning prosecution , passage=They also exposed the blatant discrepancy between the west's professed values and actual foreign policies.}}

Factual, real, not just apparent or even false.

*{{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=1 citation , passage=The original family who had begun to build a palace to rival Nonesuch had died out before they had put up little more than the gateway, so that the actual structure which had come down to posterity retained the secret magic of a promise rather than the overpowering splendour of a great architectural achievement.}}

(dated) In action at the time being; now existing; current.

(obsolete) Active, not passive.

* Shakespeare

her walking and other actual performances.

* Jeremy Taylor

Let your holy and pious intention be actual ; that is given to God.

Used to emphasise a noun or verb, whether something is real or metaphorical.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= The machine of a new soul , passage=The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure. Yet this is the level of organisation that does the actual thinking—and is, presumably, the seat of consciousness.}}