conditional
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
adj.only happening or true if something else happens first.
adj.subject to or dependent on one or more conditions being met.
Simple“The bank gave them a conditional offer on the house, depending on a survey.”
In context“The peace treaty remained conditional upon the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from the disputed border regions.”
SynonymsAntonyms - 02 B2 Upper Intermediate
adj.describing a sentence or word that shows a condition, often using 'if'.
adj.expressing a condition or supposition; typically used to describe clauses or moods that indicate a hypothetical scenario.
Simple“In the sentence 'If it rains, we will stay home,' the first part is a conditional clause.”
In context“The student struggled to master the third conditional, which requires the past perfect in the 'if' clause and 'would have' in the main clause.”
UsageIn linguistics, this often refers to 'if-then' structures.
Synonyms - 03 C1 Advanced
n.a sentence or a piece of computer code that starts with 'if'.
n.a statement, proposition, or grammatical mood that expresses a condition; in programming, a logic gate that branches based on a boolean value.
Simple“The programmer added a conditional to the code to check if the user was logged in.”
In context“The algorithm uses a series of nested conditionals to determine the optimal routing path based on real-time traffic data.”
Synonymsif statement
“In late January, Marineland was given conditional approval by the federal government to export the animals.”
From French conditionnel, from Old French condicionel, equivalent to condition + -al.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.