Skip to content
ontologydriven
Sign out

Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

seminormal en · ADJ

Pronunciation

Etymology

From semi- + normal.

Meanings

  1. (not-comparable, of a ring) Being a commutative reduced ring in which, whenever x, y satisfy x³=y², there is s with s²=x and s³=y.
  2. (not-comparable) Of a subgroup A of a group G, having a subgroup B such that AB = G, and for any proper subgroup C of B, AC is a proper subgroup of G.
  3. (not-comparable, of a default, qualifier:default logic) Having all its justifications entailing its conclusion.
  4. (not-comparable) Partially normal.
    • There was always art on the wall, but every night, after the shows were over and the bars had closed and there was nowhere else to buy booze, you might find David Lee Roth at the gallery with a bunch of Hollywood lowlifes and scumbags. It was where he went to lose his ego and be a seminormal person who liked to have a good time. 2016, Keith Morris with Jim Ruland, “Last Straw”, in My Damage: The Story of a Punk Rock Survivor, Boston, Mass.: Da Capo Press, →ISBN, page 174:
    • Not noticeably belonging to any one group is often upsetting, and these feelings of isolation, of not fitting in, easily carry over into adolescence—a time when everyone, even the fairest-haired among us, must struggle awfully hard just to seem seminormal. 1997, Sandra Scarry, John Scarry, The Writer’s Workplace: Paragraphs to Essays; Building College Writing Skills, Fort Worth, Tex.: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, →ISBN, page 531:
    • When it reaches this point, the only choice you have is to try to remember cruel things from your childhood and threaten or ridicule them. Ms. Behavior is aware that this might sound mean, but it is actually benevolent. Otherwise, your formerly seminormal friend will soon be playing with dolls and jacks at work, spending all of his free time at Disney movies, and dragging his teddy bear to social functions. 1995, Meryl Cohn, “Codependent If You Want Me to Be”, in “Do What I Say”: Ms. Behavior’s Guide to Gay & Lesbian Etiquette, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin Company, →ISBN, part three (Gay & Lesbian Cultural Oddities That Ms. Behavior Finds Particularly Compelling), page 106:

Relateds

seminormality