Everything about Nominal totally explained
The adjective
nominal (ultimately from Latin
nōmen, "name") generally relates to the concept of
names, and often to the difference between what something is in name (
ideally or
theoretically) and what it's in reality.
General principles
A nominal quantity (for example, length, diameter, speed, volume, voltage, value) is generally the ideal quantity according to which some item has been named. Such a nominal value may often be different from the actual value, having a relation to the actual value that's anywhere on a spectrum from closely related (for example, differing only within a range of acceptable random variation) to only distantly related. An example of the former is a type of battery that has an
actual voltage of 1.62 V, but is called a "1.5 volt battery"; it has a
nominal voltage of 1.5 V (which can't be measured anywhere). An example of the latter is the nominal size
2×4 for
dimensional lumber: its actual size is 1½″ × 3½″ (38×89 mm) (plus or minus some small tolerance).
In human cognition, there are at least two concepts that relate to a difference between what something is in name and what it's in reality: (1) whether we even perceive that the difference exists; and (2) if so, whether we judge that the difference
matters to us. A judgment in one case that the difference is very important and another judgment in another case that the difference is very unimportant can both relate to the concept of "in name only": we emphasize that the difference exists, in order to implicitly emphasize either its importance or unimportance. In the latter case (unimportance), the word
nominal can approach
synonymity with "small" or "unimportant", such as in the phrase
paying a nominal fee. The fee is a monetary expense in name only; in reality, the amount doesn't matter very much. In the former case (importance), the word
nominal can emphasize the irony of false appearances or assumptions, such as when a certain police department is especially corrupt—because we archetypically equate police to "the good guys", we may emphasize the badness of this department by saying that they're
nominally the face of law and order in their community: that is, in name only.
Specific meanings deriving from the general concepts above
Economics
In
economics, a
nominal value is the listed value of an item in a monetary currency as opposed to the 'real' value in terms of purchasing power. See
real versus nominal value. A
nominal interest rate may refer to either a rate of interest that isn't re-stated to correct for compounding, or an interest rate that doesn't take into account
inflation (to derive the
real interest rate).
Engineering
In
engineering,
nominal regarding measurements generally can be defined as "what is predicted without considering what deviation may occur or whether it's acceptable"; or "what is predicted plus or minus X number of
standard deviations". The use of the phrase "all systems nominal" at
NASA indicates that telemetry is reading as expected from historical data trends. This concept often overlaps with the layperson's sense of the word
normal, but
nominal doesn't always mean
normal.
Law
In
law,
nominal damages may be assessed by a jury or judge in a lawsuit when it's found that the defendant committed the act complained of by the plaintiff, but that no harm was suffered by the plaintiff as a result.
Linguistics
In
linguistics, a
nominal is a word or group of words functioning as a noun. The word is also sometimes used as a shortened form of "nominal phrase", a synonym for "
noun phrase". "Nominal" can also mean a sequence of one or more
nouns that don't form a complete
noun phrase. In other uses, it refers to a class of word that encapsulates both parts of speech in English as nouns and adjectives.
Statistics
In
statistics,
nominal data is a form of
categorical data where the order of the categories isn't significant. This is sometimes contracted to
nominals.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Nominal'.
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