Word.ws English Dictionary

compositional

Syllables: com·pos·it·ion·al/ˌkɒm.pəˈzɪ.ʃən.əl/

compositional adjective: of or relating to composition.

Adjective

compositional (comparative more compositional, superlative most compositional)

  1. Of or relating to composition.
    • The compositional aspects of this work are less than ideal.
  2. Being the sum of its parts.
    • The phrase "sum of its parts" is entirely compositional.
    • A wet súit meaning a suit that is wet is a compositional phrase; a wét suit meaning a garment worn by skin divers is a compound.1979, Edward S. Klima, Ursula Bellugi, The Signs of Language, page 202

Examples of compositional in a sentence

  • We have already noted that compounds tend to have meanings that are not entirely compositional and would therefore need to be listed.2003, Jean Boase-Beier, Ken R. Lodge, The German Language: A Linguistic Introduction, page 153:
  • Sentence meaning is compositional because, to a large extent, it depends on a combination of the meanings of sentence constituents, which implies the concept of semantic structure.2004, Sergei Nirenburg, Victor Raskin, Ontological Semantics, page 106:

All 11 example sentences with compositional

Antonyms of compositional

Forms of compositional

comparativemore compositional
superlativemost compositional

Origin of compositional

From composition + -al.

Words formed from compositional

Phrases with compositional

Words that rhyme with compositional

Questions about compositional

What does compositional mean?
Compositional means of or relating to composition.
How do you use compositional in a sentence?
We have already noted that compounds tend to have meanings that are not entirely compositional and would therefore need to be listed.
What part of speech is compositional?
Compositional is an adjective.
How do you pronounce compositional?
Compositional is pronounced /ˌkɒm.pəˈzɪ.ʃən.əl/.

Words near compositional in the dictionary

  1. composition metals
  2. composition notebook
  3. composition notebooks
  4. composition of a felony
  5. composition over inheritance
  6. compositional
  7. compositional grammar
  8. compositional grammars
  9. compositionalism
  10. compositionalist
  11. compositionalists

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: compositional (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-compositional.oga.

Cite this entry: “compositional.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/compositional. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.