as in theoretical
dealing with or expressing a quality or idea
ideograms are ideational—they are meant to suggest some general idea and not a particular word or phrase
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of ideational
Constructivists’ major argument is that world politics is as much ideational as material and that relations among states depend on norms as much as on military or economic power.
—
Stacie E. Goddard,
Foreign Affairs,
31 Oct. 2025
These ideational shifts, influenced by both global narratives and local aspirations, are increasingly shaping how Indians approach relationships.
—
Anuradha Gupta,
Forbes.com,
8 Aug. 2025
The ideational content of the image — a man killing another man on a public sidewalk — is only half the message.
—
F.k. Plous,
Chicago Tribune,
8 Jan. 2025
This process, which Doten-Snitker and her coauthors term ideational diffusion, often took many years as people in towns and cities needed time to digest new ideas about witchcraft and turn them into behavior.
—
Kapil Kajal,
Interesting Engineering,
8 Oct. 2024
Steven Spielberg extends Griffith’s and Ford’s historical insight through an astonishing mix of visual and ideational dialectics.
—
Armond White,
National Review,
28 June 2023
Stacie E. Goddard,
Foreign Affairs,
31 Oct. 2025
These ideational shifts, influenced by both global narratives and local aspirations, are increasingly shaping how Indians approach relationships.
—
Anuradha Gupta,
Forbes.com,
8 Aug. 2025
The ideational content of the image — a man killing another man on a public sidewalk — is only half the message.
—
F.k. Plous,
Chicago Tribune,
8 Jan. 2025
This process, which Doten-Snitker and her coauthors term ideational diffusion, often took many years as people in towns and cities needed time to digest new ideas about witchcraft and turn them into behavior.
—
Kapil Kajal,
Interesting Engineering,
8 Oct. 2024
Steven Spielberg extends Griffith’s and Ford’s historical insight through an astonishing mix of visual and ideational dialectics.
—
Armond White,
National Review,
28 June 2023
Recent Examples of Synonyms for ideational
Adjective
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Before that, the idea of one day becoming king was something distant and theoretical, a concept discussed in books and family history rather than something with immediate relevance to his own life.
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This stopped being theoretical just this month.
Adjective
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Instrumental rock music of the kind Horse Lords make—hypnotic, hyper-focused, complex—usually carries a whiff of manifesto, offering a map toward transcendence of some political, metaphysical, or pick-your-variety kind.
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Rationality lurks in theology from the beginning, just as philosophy never shakes off its yearning for the metaphysical.
Adjective
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But any correspondence between string theory and experiment is gratifying to Vafa, who has spent the past four decades trying to wrest the theory from the purely conceptual realm to the point of generating testable predictions.
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Noah Rubin Rubin and his colleagues first proposed the design for this camera in a previous conceptual paper.
Adjective
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And that fear does not remain abstract.
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Those are not abstract AI principles.
Adjective
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The Moon in your 1st House of Identity squares mental Mercury in your 10th House of Career, so personal needs may rub against professional expectations.
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Over the next year, expect to see a few more invasive BCI companies launch similar clinical trials with the goal of translating mental activity into spoken words.
Adjective
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Today’s economy rewards intellectual horsepower.
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Chattel slavery stole people’s families, intellectual creations, land, access to resources, and, for some, spiritual foundations.
Cite this Entry
“Ideational.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/ideational. Accessed 25 Jun. 2026.
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