a. | 1. | Relating to the reason; not physical; mental. | ||||||||||
2. | Having reason, or the faculty of reasoning; endowed with reason or understanding; reasoning. | |||||||||||
3. | Agreeable to reason; not absurd, preposterous, extravagant, foolish, fanciful, or the like; wise; judicious; | |||||||||||
4. | (Chem.) Expressing the type, structure, relations, and reactions of a compound; graphic; - said of formulæ. See under Formula.
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n. | 1. | A rational being. |
Adj. | 1. | rational - consistent with or based on or using reason; "rational behavior"; "a process of rational inference"; "rational thought" Antonyms: irrational - not consistent with or using reason; "irrational fears"; "irrational animals" |
2. | rational - of or associated with or requiring the use of the mind; "intellectual problems"; "the triumph of the rational over the animal side of man" Synonyms: noetic, intellectual | |
3. | rational - capable of being expressed as a quotient of integers; "rational numbers" Antonyms: irrational - real but not expressible as the quotient of two integers; "irrational numbers" | |
4. | rational - having its source in or being guided by the intellect (distinguished from experience or emotion); "a rational analysis" |
rational - [Mathematics] a fractional number n/d, where n and d are integers, n is the numerator and d is the denominator. The set of all rational numbers is usually called Q. Computers do not usually deal with rational numbers but instead convert them to real numbers which are represented (approximately in some cases) as floating-point numbers. Compare irrational. |