FUNCTIONAL • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Functional

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/fˈəŋkʃənəl/ Listen

adjective

Functional adj.

1.

Pertaining to, or connected with, a function or duty; official.

2.

(Pathology, Physiol.) Pertaining to the function of an organ or part, or to the functions in general; involving or affecting function rather than physiology; as, functional deafness; a functional disease. See functional disease, below. (wns=2)

3.

Designed for or capable of a particular function or use; as, a style of writing in which every word is functional; functional architecture. (wns=1)

4.

Fit or ready for use or service; useable; in working order; as, the toaster was still functional even after being dropped; the lawnmower is a bit rusty but still functional. Antonym of out of order and nonfunctional. (wns=4 & 6)

Synonyms: usable, useable, in working order(predicate), operable, operational, running(prenominal), operative.

5.

Designed to emphasize practical utility rather than artistic or aesthetic purposes; as, functional education selects knowledge that is concrete and usable rather than abstract and theoretical; functional architecture; an amateurish device, crude but functional.

Functional disease (Med.), a disease of which the symptoms cannot be referred to any appreciable lesion or change of structure; the derangement of an organ arising from a cause, often unknown, external to itself opposed to organic disease, in which the organ itself is affected.

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Etymology of 'Functional'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Functional" Quotes from Famous Books

... return of time. It has cleverly been turned to practical account, however, in the treatment of disease. By a series of painstaking and brilliant experiments, the demonstration of the role played by "disassociated memories" in causing certain functional nervous and mental troubles has been achieved. It has been shown that severe emotional shocks, frights, griefs, worries, may be—and frequently are—completely effaced from conscious recollection, while continuing to be vividly remembered in the depths of the subconscious. ...

— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... the analysis of organisms reveals the same wonderful though familiar characteristics. The living organism is composed of parts which are called organs, and these differ from one another in structural and functional respects. Each of them performs a special task which the others do not, and each differentiated organ does its part to make the whole creature an efficient mechanism. The leg of the frog is an organ of locomotion, the heart is a device for pumping blood, the stomach accomplishes ...

— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... extremity of each, is a digit with three joints of the same general character as those of the middle digit, only very much smaller. These small digits are so disposed that they could have had but very little functional importance, and they must have been rather of the nature of the dew-claws, such as are to be found in many ruminant animals. The Hipparion, as the extinct European three-toed horse is called, in fact, ...

— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... completely modern, functional system of government at the national level, we in Washington will at last be able to provide government that is ...

— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... the meaning of shapes. In the paths of evolution there are grass eaters and berry eaters and root diggers. Each has its functional shape of face and neck—and its wide, startled-looking eyes to see and run away from the hunters. In all their racial history they have never killed to eat. They have been killed and eaten, or run away, and they ...

— The Carnivore • G. A. Morris

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