Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use rational in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, noun

Rational means capable of reasoning. Example: “Man is a rational creature.”

Examples of rational by meaning

adjectiveCapable of reasoning.

  • Man is a rational creature.
  • The utility of valid arguments is a monument to our frailty: to the fact that we are not completely rational beings.2001, Mark Sainsbury, chapter 1, in Logical Forms — An Introduction to Philosophical Logic, 2nd edition, Blackwell Publishing, →ISBN, §7...

adjectiveLogically sound; not self-contradictory or otherwise absurd.

  • His statements were quite rational.

adjectiveOf a number, capable of being expressed as the ratio of two integers.

  • ¾ is a rational number, but √2 is an irrational number.

nounA rational number: a number that can be expressed as the quotient of two integers.

  • The quotient of two rationals is again a rational.

More sentences with rational

  • Every rational number can be written as either a terminating decimal or a recurring decimal.From the entry recurring
  • Rational numbers are susceptible of description as quotients of two integers.From the entry susceptible
  • Rational numbers are a countable set, so almost all numbers are irrational.From the entry almost all
  • Birational geometry amounts to the study of mappings given by rational functions rather than polynomials.From the entry birational geometry
  • Each continuous function from the real line to the rationals is constant, since the rationals are totally disconnected.From the entry continuous
  • The conative, as opposed to the cognitive or affective, relates to purposeful, but not necessarily ultimately rational, action.From the entry conative
  • Growth in the most mature markets is likely to be arithmetic; on what rational basis could one hope for exponential growth there?From the entry arithmetic
  • The empty set is not denumerable because it is finite; the rational numbers are, surprisingly, denumerable because every possible fraction can be assigned a natural number and vice versa.From the entry denumerable
  • The study of algebraic number fields, and, more generally, of algebraic extensions of the field of rational numbers, is the central topic of algebraic number theory.From the entry algebraic number field
  • The semiconvergents to the continued fraction expansion of a real number include all the rational approximations which are better than any approximation with a smaller denominator.From the entry semiconvergent
  • They should behave brotherly toward one another because they are rational and moral beings.2025, Usha Rana, Rupender Singh, Combating Human Trafficking. From the entry brotherly
  • Alma isn’t made of stone, even if she approaches her strange situation with a rational skepticism.2021 September 16, A. A. Dowd, “Dan Stevens as a dashing robot lover? That computes”, in AV Club. From the entry made of stone
  • Besides, rational education does not favoritize but acknowledges individual performance and excellency.2021, Demetris Katsikis, Towards Rational Education. From the entry favoritize
  • The rational human soul begins its life in a star and sees "the nature of the all".2021, Andrea Nightingale, Philosophy and Religion in Plato's Dialogues, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 264. From the entry hyperdivine
  • The soul must master its human body and work to recover its original rational abilities.2021, Andrea Nightingale, Philosophy and Religion in Plato's Dialogues, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 264. From the entry hyperdivine
  • If you are serious about climate change a rolling programme of electrification is the only rational policy.2019 October, Roger Ford, “WCP award - victory for DfT reactionaries”, in Modern Railways, page 31. From the entry climate change
  • With the right rules, a community of less than fully rational thinkers can cultivate rational thoughts.2018, Steven Pinker, “Chapter 1: Dare to Understand!”, in Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress…. From the entry science
  • We demonstrate how to use the rational root theorem to prove the irrationality of many numbers.2017, Martin H. Weissman, An Illustrated Theory of Numbers, American Mathematical Society, page 84. From the entry rational root theorem
  • Love wasn't ever rational, but in my case, it was nuttier than squirrel poop.2017 September 9, Meghan O’Flynn, Redemption, Pygmalion Publishing, →ISBN. From the entry nuttier than squirrel poop
  • In particular we give criteria for uniruledness and rational connectedness of components of D..2016, Yuan Wang, “Rational curves on hypersurfaces”, in arXiv. From the entry uniruledness
  • In this paper, we solve the existence problem of telescopers for rational functions in three discrete variables.2016, Shaoshi Chen, Qing-Hu Hou, George Labahn, Rong-Hua Wang, “Existence Problem of Telescopers: Beyond the Bivariate Case”, in arXiv. From the entry telescoper
  • The idea that war and conflicts are purely rational, calculable considerations lives on today.2015, Katrine Marcal, Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner?, →ISBN, page 62. From the entry arm-wrestle
  • The corresponding generating series are written in closed form, as plethystic exponentials of simple rational functions.2015, Alberto Cazzaniga, Andrew Morrison, Brent Pym, Balazs Szendroi, “Motivic Donaldson--Thomas invariants of some quantized threefolds”…. From the entry plethystic
  • Else he was too sleep-drunk to string two rational thoughts together.2011, Sabine C. Bauer, Stargate SG-1: Transitions, Fandemonium Books (2011), unnumbered pages. From the entry sleep-drunk
  • Most of the rational world . . . foresaw a smooth ride to victory for Democrats.2008 April 23, Amy Sullivan, “A Primary with No End”, in TIME, archived from the original on 16 Mar 2014, retrieved 03 Jul 2015. From the entry midterm
  • Nor are the properties of absolute certainty, rational irrevisability, or infallibility attributed to a priori claims.2008 January 30, Lisa Warenski, “Naturalism, fallibilism, and the a priori”, in Philosophical Studies, volume 142, number 3, →DOI. From the entry irrevisability
  • It's fair to say that people's reaction to Gerstmanngate has been less than rational.2008 January 25, Lisa, “The idiot is whinier than the sword”, in Felix, number 1,393, London: Imperial College Union, →ISSN, page 9. From the entry Gerstmanngate
  • A cubic surface with a triple point (a cubic cone) may or may not be rational.2007, Rida T Farouki, Pythagorean-Hodograph Curves: Algebra and Geometry Inseparable, →ISBN. From the entry triple point
  • Under developmentalism, the economy dominates society rather than the more rational opposite.2006, Mark Mattern, Putting Ideas to Work, Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, page 325. From the entry developmentalism
  • Romer applied a "tougher" rational basis standard (what O'Connor called "a more searching form of rational basis.").2005 Josh Rosenbluth, Re: Gay "marriage" is not a "right" Group: alt.politics.homosexuality. From the entry incestophile
  • The rational detective, of course, is not prepared to bow before oakness and elmness.2004, François Gallix, Vanessa Guignery, Crime Fictions: Subverted Codes and New Structures, page 2. From the entry oakness
  • Unlike the slerp techniques, this approach produces motions with rational point trajectories, the socalled rational motions.2002, G. Farin, J. Hoschek, M.-S. Kim, Handbook of Computer Aided Geometric Design, page 723. From the entry slerp
  • An empiric oftentimes, and a silly chirurgeon, doth more strange cures than a rational physician., New York Review, Books, 2001, p.257. From the entry empiric
  • The equivalence relation most relevant for algebraic K-theory is rational equivalence.1999, E. M. Friedlander, “Lecture VII. Beilinson's vision”, in H. Bass, A. O. Kuku, C. Pedrini, editors, Algebraic K-theory And Its…. From the entry algebraic K-theory
  • The grammarnazi will often enforce rules that have no rational basis in the English language.1997 July 30, Tryptan Felle, “Contact, Religion, and Pi in the Sky”, in rec.arts.movies.current-films (Usenet). From the entry grammarnazi

Meaning of rational

  1. adjective Capable of reasoning.
  2. adjective Behaving according to some partial order of preferences.
  3. adjective Logically sound; not self-contradictory or otherwise absurd.

Full definition of rational

Questions about rational in a sentence

How do you use rational in a sentence?
Rational is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “Man is a rational creature.”
What is a short sentence with rational?
“His statements were quite rational.”
What does rational mean?
Rational means capable of reasoning.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rational (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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