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Functional   /fˈəŋkʃənəl/   Listen
Functional

adjective
1.
Designed for or capable of a particular function or use.  "Functional architecture"
2.
Involving or affecting function rather than physiology.
3.
Relating to or based on function especially as opposed to structure.  "Delegates elected on a functional rather than a geographical basis"
4.
Fit or ready for use or service.  Synonyms: operable, operational, usable, useable.  "The lawnmower is a bit rusty but still usable" , "An operational aircraft" , "The dishwasher is now in working order"
5.
Designed for or adapted to a function or use.  "Functional architecture"
6.
(of e.g. a machine) performing or capable of performing.  Synonyms: operative, running, working.  "A functional set of brakes"



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"Functional" Quotes from Famous Books



... fluctuating. I am, therefore, not prepared to accept this third causative factor without question. Nevertheless I am perfectly willing to admit that other factors besides cerebral hyperaemia and anaemia may produce the functional variety of headache. There would seem to be ample ground for ascribing great causative importance to excessive irritation of the brain plasma itself. Hence those forms of headache which while, being unaccompanied by any especial circulatory derangements, succeed, oftentimes, with relentless ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various

... It was probably completed by 1881, at which time the board of supervisors was appropriating funds for new furnishings. The architecture of this newest office presented a mixture of three styles. In overall appearance, its square shape, hipped roof and functional design were reminiscent of the eighteenth century buildings of James Wren. The late nineteenth century's preference for exterior decoration was illustrated by a dentiled cornice, a belt of corbelling three courses wide in the brickwork below the cornice, and brick pilasters ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton

... posterior division of the insect body: consists normally of nine or ten apparent segments, but actual number is a mooted question: bears no functional legs in the ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... Coroner with functional gravity, 'for three inquests; three?—no, pardon me, for four inquests, and for at least one charge of ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy

... completely modern, functional system of government at the national level, we in Washington will at last be able to provide government that ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Richard Nixon • Richard Nixon

... had these four hours, and the law that every state of prolonged excitement brings exhaustion that should be refreshed by a functional rest, was proved false in his case. After a hard day's work he would go to bed at one o'clock in the morning and would go to sleep immediately. But very soon he awoke with a start, suffocating, covered with perspiration, ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot

... required to make the change, the possibility of making it need never be questioned. Breaking the habit of excessive use of drugs, tobacco, tea and coffee, or alcohol, will occasion much discomfort, hardship, and even functional disturbance, but these ills are only temporary, and the organism soon returns to its original ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... on the question as to whether or not hydrophobia is a bona fide disease, or whether it is only a functional disturbance in which the element of fear predominates. No hydrophobia germ has ever been isolated, and when the doctors these days can't find a germ to fit a disease, it looks as if there was something wrong. It has many times been demonstrated ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs

... support this theory. Even you will admit that I, if I am no match for Pyrran life, am surely well versed in it. And all Pyrran flora and fauna I've seen have one thing in common. They're not functional. None of their immense armory of weapons is used against each other. Their toxins don't seem to operate against Pyrran life. They are good only for dispensing death to Homo sapiens. And that is a physical impossibility. In the three hundred years that men have been on this planet, the life forms ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison

... latter has reached a certain definite saturated condition. There can be little doubt but that a degree of pollution far short of that necessary to produce death has a weakening effect on the human organism, and that by means of the increased functional activity of other organs doing work intended for the lungs the resistance to disease is much impaired. Life is a continual struggle of the bodily tissues against the attacks of the micro-organisms and their tendencies to destroy life; ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... to temperament and local influences, her apprehension of things unseen and super-normal had been remarkably acute. From the dawn of conscious intelligence these had formed an integral element in the atmosphere of her life; and that without functional disturbance, moral or physical, of a neurotic sort. She felt no morbid curiosity about such matters, did not care to dwell upon or talk of them.—Few persons do who, being sane in mind and body, are yet endowed with the rather questionable blessing ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... very sharpest difficulty of the victim of the conflict I should seek to represent, and the very highest interest of his predicament, dwell deep in the fact that his repudiation of the great obvious, great moral or functional or useful character, shall just have to consent to resemble a surrender for absolutely nothing. Those characters are all large and expansive, seated and established and endowed; whereas the most charming truth about the preference for art is that to parade abroad ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... the University of Tubingen, in his great work "Der Kehlkopf des Menschen" (The Human Larynx), says in the introduction: "Only the vocal cords, with the slit they form, have specifically functional signification, in a narrower sense, of a voice apparatus, as the parts of the larynx which lie under and over them have no material and deciding influence on ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke

... different orders of relations. When we call a group of animals, or of plants, a species, we may imply thereby either, that all these animals or plants have some common peculiarity of form or structure; or, we may mean that they possess some common functional character. That part of biological science which deals with form and structure is called Morphology—that which concerns itself with function, Physiology—so that we may conveniently speak of these two senses, or aspects, of "species"—the ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... the latest discoveries in the structure of the brain. The centre theory and the cell and neurone theory seemed obligatory starting-points. To-day we have become shy of such postulates of one-sided not sufficiently functional materialism. We now call for an interest in psychobiological facts in terms of critical common sense and in their own right—largely a product of psychiatry. There always is a place for elements, but there certainly is also a place for the large momentous facts of human life ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... I saw Mrs. Ridley yesterday morning, and found her doing well. No sign of fever or any functional disturbance. She must have had some shock ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur

... Philosopher. "This course, however, is rarely followed by the fairy people: they do not ordinarily steal for ransom, but for love of thieving, or from some other obscure and possibly functional causes, and the victim is retained in their forts or duns until by the effluxion of time they forget their origin and become peaceable citizens of the fairy state. Kidnapping is not by any means confined to either humanity or ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... of Drosera, some of them inhabitants of distant countries, chiefly for the sake of ascertaining whether they caught insects. This seemed the more necessary as the leaves of some of the species differ to an extraordinary degree in shape from the rounded ones of Drosera rotundifolia. In functional powers, ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... sexually vigorous. Consumption is often inherited from fathers, because they furnish the body, yet more women die with it because of female obstructions. Hence women love passion in men, because it endows their offspring with strong functional vigor. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... Sheet 17, is a generalized diagram of the uro-genital organs in the vertebrata; M.L. is the middle line of the body, G. is the genital organ, Pr. is the pronephros, or fore kidney, a structure which is never developed in the dog-fish, but which has functional importance in the tadpole and cod, and appears as a transitory rudiment in the chick. A duct, which is often spoken of as the pronephric duct (p.d.), and which we have figured under that name, is always developed. Anteriorly it opens into the body cavity. It is also called the Mullerian ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... DIFFERENCE IN ITS PHYSICAL NATURE, climate and soil may produce in this animal, his functional characteristics are the same in whatever part of the world he may be found; and whether in the trackless forests of South America, the coral isles of Polynesia, the jungles of India, or the spicy brakes of Sumatra, he is everywhere known for his gluttony, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... irregular development of irresponsible wealthy people is swallowing up and assimilating more and more the old class of administrative land-owning gentlemen in all their grades and degrees. The old upper class, as a functional member of the State, is being effaced. And I have also suggested that the old lower class, the broad necessary base of the social pyramid, the uneducated inadaptable peasants and labourers, is, with the development of toil-saving machinery, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... that is. For instance, no matter how long we talked, it was very unlikely that we'd either of us tell the other anything complete or very accurate about how we lived from day to day, about our techniques of surviving and staying sane or at least functional—that would be too imprudent, it would go too much against the grain of any player of the murder game. Would I tell her, or anyone, about how I worked the ruses of playing dead and disguising myself as a woman, about my trick of picking a path just before dark and then circling back to it by a pre-surveyed ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... negligible, and he regards as typical and significant—that he alludes on the occasions when he is unable to find a red book on the sitting-room table. In vain do I point out that when language is variable and fluid it is alive, and that there may be two opinions about the structural top and the functional top, whereas there can be but one as to the book being or not being on the table. He maintains a quiet cheerfulness, as of one who is conscious of being, if not invulnerable, at ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge

... unite and form the primitive reproductive cell—the prototype of marriage. The human body with its millions of cells and cell colonies is developed by the multiplication, with gradual differentiation, of the reproductive cell. Its abnormalities of structure, of cell materials and of functional tendencies are reproduced just as surely as its normal constituents. Herein lies the simple explanation of heredity which is proved to be an actual fact, not only by common experience and scientific observation but also in a more definite way by Nature's records in the ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... of circulation may be due to structural affection of vessels, or functional disorders of the heart, and in some instances, a combination of these causes may ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix

... ways—all that is instinctive and automatic—the subliminal consciousness, so to speak—seems to be that of a gentleman. But it is impossible to get any response out of him, for anything connected with the war. And yet we doubt whether there is any actual brain lesion. So far it seems to be severe functional disturbance—which is neurasthenia—aggravated by his wounds and general state. But the condition is getting worse steadily. It is very sad, and very touching. However, you will get it all out of Vincent. You must have some dinner first. ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward



Words linked to "Functional" :   pathology, practical, operable, organic, role, use, useful, nonfunctional, function, functioning, purpose, functional magnetic resonance imaging, utilitarian, serviceable, structural



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