formal

  • (a) being in accord with established forms and conventions and requirements (as e.g. of formal dress)
    • pay one's formal respects
    • formal dress
    • a formal ball
    • the requirement was only formal and often ignored
    • a formal education
  • (s) characteristic of or befitting a person in authority
    • formal duties
    • an official banquet
  • (a) (of spoken and written language) adhering to traditional standards of correctness and without casual, contracted, and colloquial forms
    • the paper was written in formal English
  • (s) represented in simplified or symbolic form schematic, conventional,
  • (s) logically deductive
    • formal proof
  • (s) refined or imposing in manner or appearance; befitting a royal court
    • a courtly gentleman
    courtly, stately,

Nouns

Synonyms

ball dinner dress dinner gown evening gown schematic conventional courtly stately

Antonyms

informal

See also

conventional rhetorical

Words of close approximity

format
format formed former formic formol
formaldehyde formal garden formalin formalisation formalise formalised formalism formalistic formalities formality formalization formalize formalized formal logic formally formalness formal semantics formalwear