rational
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: enpr: ră'sh(ə)nəl
ipa: /ˈɹæʃ(ə)nəl/
rhymes: -æʃənəl
Forms: form: more rational
form: most rational
form: rationall
Etymology: From Old French rationel, rational, from Latin rationalis (“of or belonging to reason, rational, reasonable; having a ratio”), from ratio (“reason; calculation”).
Senses: examples: text: Man is a rational creature.
text: The utility of valid arguments is a monument to our frailty: to the fact that we are not completely rational beings.
ref: 2001, Mark Sainsbury, chapter 1, in Logical Forms — An Introduction to Philosophical Logic, 2nd edition, Blackwell Publishing, →ISBN, §7, page 32:
glosses: Capable of reasoning.
examples: text: His statements were quite rational.
text: Prevention for the future is now almost universally allowed to be the only rational plea for the infliction of punishment; but this, when left to the arbitrary discretion of individuals, always has been found, and always will be found, to degenerate into the exercise of revenge for the past.
ref: 1812 The Freethinking Christians' Magazine: Volume 2 p. 21
glosses: Logically sound; not self-contradictory or otherwise absurd.
examples: text: rational conduct
text: Temperature 99.8 degrees. Pulse 104. She was quite conscious and rational at times, at others very noisy.
ref: 1867 C. Handfield Jones, Case Of Low Fever: Delirium: Incomplete Dementia. The British Medical Journal Vol. 2, No. 344, Aug. 3
text: The [Isaac] Newton that emerges from the [unpublished] manuscripts is far from the popular image of a rational practitioner of cold and pure reason. The architect of modern science was himself not very modern. He was obsessed with alchemy.
ref: 2014 June 21, “Magician’s brain”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8892:
glosses: Healthy or balanced intellectually; exhibiting reasonableness.
raw_tags: of a person or personal characteristics
examples: ¾ is a rational number, but √2 is an irrational number.
topics: arithmetic
mathematics
sciences
glosses: Comprising, or expressible as, a ratio
Of a number, capable of being expressed as the ratio of two integers.
topics: algebra
mathematics
sciences
glosses: Comprising, or expressible as, a ratio
Of an algebraic expression in indeterminates, or more generally a function: capable of being expressed as the ratio of two polynomials.
topics: algebraic-geometry
geometry
mathematics
sciences
glosses: Comprising, or expressible as, a ratio
Of a variety: (informally) geometrically simple almost everywhere; (formally) birationally equivalent to projective space
topics: algebraic-geometry
geometry
mathematics
sciences
glosses: Comprising, or expressible as, a ratio
Of a function between varieties: acting as a morphism on an open subset of its domain.
topics: algebraic-geometry
geometry
mathematics
sciences
glosses: Comprising, or expressible as, a ratio
Of a point on an algebraic variety over a field: whose coordinates belong to the field in question (in contrast to those points of the variety which are only defined over the algebraic closure of the base field).
topics: chemistry
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
glosses: Expressing the type, structure, relations, and reactions of a compound; graphic; said of formulae.
examples: text: A rational table is physical, a written table is neither.
topics: natural-sciences
physical-sciences
physics
glosses: Expressing a physical object.
Derived terms: antirational
biorational
birational
contrarational
extrarational
hyperrational
nonrational
overrational
prerational
preterrational
pseudorational
Ratfor
rational basis review
rational choice theory
rational dress
rational egoism
rational egoist
rational function
rational horizon
rationalism
rationalist
rationalistic
rationally
rational numbers
rational root theorem
rational selfishness
rational symptom
semirational
superrational
transrational
ultrarational
unirational
unrational
Related terms: arational
irrational
non-rational
rationale
rationality
rationalness
subrational
suprarational