Literary notes about Notional (AI summary)
The term “notional” is deployed in literature with a range of connotations that juxtapose the abstract or theoretical with the concrete. In some texts it is used to signify ideas or distinctions that exist solely in the mind, underscoring a contrast between mental assent and practical reality—for instance, when moral boundaries or causal actions are described as notional rather than real ([1], [2], [3]). In other contexts the word takes on a more descriptive tone, characterizing behavior or qualities that are whimsical, capricious, or even imprecise, as when an individual’s erratic nature is labeled notional ([4], [5], [6]). Furthermore, in philosophical or theological writing “notional” frequently qualifies a type of abstract operation or act—as in discussions of notional causality or acts—which helps to distinguish genuine, material impact from mere conceptual formulation ([7], [8]).
- The separation effected is only mental, subjective, notional, formal, negative; not objective, not real, not positive.
— from Ontology, or the Theory of Being by P. (Peter) Coffey - It should be added, perhaps, that the frontiers between moral and physical action are purely notional.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana - The apprehension of the former I call real, and of the latter notional.
— from An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent by John Henry Newman - notional , a. whimsical , capricious , irresolute , freakish , crotchety , changeable .
— from Putnam's Word Book A Practical Aid in Expressing Ideas Through the Use of an Exact and Varied Vocabulary by Louis A. (Louis Andrew) Flemming - So it's not because I am notional at all, but because I don't care to, my lad.
— from Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile by Herman Melville - Thomas he wouldn't never have a new thing in the house; he was terrible set and notional about it
— from Jane Field: A Novel by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman - He brings out, in peculiar but forcible terms, the idea of notional causality which underlies Aristotles Logic.
— from Aristotle by George Grote - So when we say, "spirates" or "begets," this imports only a notional act.
— from Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars)From the Complete American Edition by Thomas, Aquinas, Saint
