Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of, pertaining to, or according to gradation.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective By regular steps or gradations; of or pertaining to gradation.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective By regular steps or gradations.
  • adjective Of or pertaining to gradation.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective taking place by degrees

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

gradation +‎ -al

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Examples

  • Here also it is obvious, that although John only presents these opposites in their generic form, yet we are necessarily led to the idea of gradational differences in the actual life.

    The Scriptural Expositions of Dr. Augustus Neander: III. The First Epistle of John, Practically Explained. 1789-1850 1870

  • The northwestern boundary is gradational, as more gentle slopes and lower relief are found towards the center of the region.

    Ecoregions of Alabama and Georgia (EPA) 2008

  • Depletion is slow for abundant also found mainly in deposits of relatively low geochemical concentration with gradational boundaries-especially slow if they can be recycled after use.

    Limits to Exploitation of Nonrenewable Resources (historical) Earl Cook 2007

  • The evaluation of the principal versions of the idea of evil inclines us to a gradational view.

    PROBLEM OF EVIL RADOSLAV A. TSANOFF 1968

  • The antithesis was directional and gradational; the good was always in the upward reach, the evil in the downward drag.

    PROBLEM OF EVIL RADOSLAV A. TSANOFF 1968

  • But as his Heraclitean views compelled Plato to recognize a gradational reality, downwards to sensibles, he modi - fied their theories so as to achieve a procession of being from first principles and the mediation of mathe - maticals between ideas and particulars.

    Dictionary of the History of Ideas JAMES PHILIP 1968

  • The part which, I think, will have most influence is when he gives whole series of cases, like that of whalebone, in which we cannot explain the gradational steps; but such cases have no weight on my mind -- if a few fish were extinct, who on earth would have ventured even to conjecture that lung had originated in swim-bladder?

    Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 James Marchant

  • I have had grand success this morning in tracing gradational steps by which the peacock tail has been developed: I quite feel as if I had seen

    Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 James Marchant

  • But the three zones mingle and overlap one another at the edges, like the colours of the solar spectrum; hence these complex buildings, these edifices of the gradational, transitional period.

    I. Notre Dame. Book III 1917

  • I have had grand success this morning in tracing gradational steps by which the peacock tail has been developed: I quite feel as if I had seen a long line of its progenitors.

    Alfred Russel Wallace Letters and Reminiscences Marchant, James 1916

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