Intensional

//ɪnˈtɛnʃənəl// adj

adj ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Of or pertaining to intension. not-comparable

    "These two treatments of the predicate are typical of the two traditions in traditional logic—the intensional and the extensional traditions. Logicians who can be counted among the intensional logicians are Gottfried Leibniz, Johann Lambert, William Hamilton, Stanley Jevons, and Hugh MacColl. Among the extensional logicians are George Boole, Augustus De Morgan, Charles Peirce, and John Venn."

Adjective
  1. 1
    used of the set of attributes that distinguish the referents of a given word wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
allegoricalconnotativedenotativeexpressiveextendedfigurative

Example

More examples

"These two treatments of the predicate are typical of the two traditions in traditional logic—the intensional and the extensional traditions. Logicians who can be counted among the intensional logicians are Gottfried Leibniz, Johann Lambert, William Hamilton, Stanley Jevons, and Hugh MacColl. Among the extensional logicians are George Boole, Augustus De Morgan, Charles Peirce, and John Venn."

Etymology

From intension + -al.

Related phrases

intensional definitionintensional fallacyintensional logic

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.