FUNCTIONAL • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • 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

... would have a fixed limit were the circumstances fixed, has its limits perpetually removed by the perpetual change of the circumstances. These modifications upon modifications, which result in evolution, structurally considered, are the accompaniments of those functional alterations continually required to re-equilibrate inner with outer actions. That moving equilibrium of inner actions corresponding with outer actions, which constitutes the life of an organism, must either be overthrown by a change in the outer actions or must undergo perturbations ...

— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... fittest alone survive; yes—but the fittest from among what? Here comes the point of divergence; the fittest from among organisms whose variations arise mainly through use and disuse? In other words, from variations that are mainly functional? Or from among organisms whose variations are in the main matters of luck? From variations into which a moral and intellectual system of payment according to results has largely entered? Or from variations which ...

— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... dupes, thus giving it plenty of time to make its search and take its pick among the bird-homes. Whether the process of evolution has similarly equipped our cow-bird I am not aware; but the vicious habits of the two birds are so identical that the same accommodating functional conditions might reasonably be expected. It is, indeed, an interesting fact well known to ornithologists that our own American cuckoos, both the yellow-billed and black-billed, although rudimentary nest-builders, still retain the same exceptional interval in ...

— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... dangers, to which those of thoroughly sound constitutions are not exposed, there are disorders called functional, to which all ...

— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... declares that all diseases, except accidental wounds and fractures begin in the psychic or "thought body" as energy and then are registered in the physical cells as organic or functional disease. ...

— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.

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