Meaning

Of or relating to composition..

Definitions by Sense

1. Of or relating to composition.
2. (linguistics) Being the sum of its parts.

Example Sentences

The compositional aspects of this work are less than ideal.

The phrase "sum of its parts" is entirely compositional.

To cite a textbook example, white house and White House are both written with internal spaces, but the first is argued to be a phrase because it is semantically compositional and has phrase-final stress, while the latter is argued to be a word because it has noncompositional semantics and compound-initial stress.

A wet súit meaning a suit that is wet is a compositional phrase; a wét suit meaning a garment worn by skin divers is a compound.

We have already noted that compounds tend to have meanings that are not entirely compositional and would therefore need to be listed.

Sentence meaning is compositional because, to a large extent, it depends on a combination of the meanings of sentence constituents, which implies the concept of semantic structure.

Word Forms

• more compositional
• most compositional

Synonyms for compositional

Antonyms for compositional

Related Words

When Should You Use Compositional?

Use compositional when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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