1

I heard the word evolutional quite recently and I’d like to know whether this word has the same meaning as evolutionary has. Do they have different connotations?

My gut says that evolutionary is like praise while evolutional is more logical. For example:

  1. This artwork is evolutionary!
  2. The evolutional fact is that predecessors either evolve to become successors or else go extinct.

Furthermore, do we have other examples similar to this one where both words share the same part of speech (both adjectives) yet have different suffixes, such as here ‑ary vs. ‑al?

Edit: I found my answer from @Barmar's comment in the answer below. I misunderstood that evolutionary and revolutionary mean the same thing. This renders my gut feeling useless. But still, do they have any difference at all?

fresnir
  • 23
  • What does a dictionary comparison tell you? – KillingTime Jan 20 '24 at 12:34
  • 6
    Evolutional is rare. The iWeb corpus has just 194 instances, against 87 thousand of evolutionary. It is so rare that most people won't have come across it, and will not have developed any semantic connotation for it. My advice it to pretend that it does not exist. – Colin Fine Jan 20 '24 at 12:45
  • I don't know if this website is trustworthy, but Wikidiff says evolutional means 'of or pertaining to evolution' and evolutionary means 'of or relating to evolution'. I don't understand the difference between them. @KillingTime – fresnir Jan 20 '24 at 12:45
  • @ColinFine Oh. That explains why I couldn't find anything about it except for the one Wikidiff link. – fresnir Jan 20 '24 at 12:51
  • Is that really supposed to be a single text that uses both words? Or are they two unrelated quotes? – Barmar Jan 20 '24 at 17:47
  • @Barmar : They're not "quotes" - they're just two examples (one an exclamation, the other a malformed noun phrase) illustrating what the OP thinks might be two different meanings associated with the two morphological derivations. – FumbleFingers Jan 20 '24 at 19:42
  • Perhaps "evolutional" is specialized jargon for some field. But (unless you are writing for such a field) do not use it yourself. – GEdgar Jan 20 '24 at 20:27
  • Related. – tchrist Jan 20 '24 at 21:11
  • There is a reasonable question in here, but both example show a total misunderstanding of proper usage. In 2. The statement is utterly backwards, as evolutionary processes are nearly always working against adaptive ones - returning a population to it's "normal" makeup after some adaptive pressures have been withstood which perturbed the population's diversity. Mutation almost never produces or contributes to speciation. Most mutations that survive in a population enable retention of traditional roles and niches and improve population cohesion. – Phil Sweet Jan 21 '24 at 01:21
  • Compare the above with literary and literal. The first expresses the thing itself being a manner. The second expresses the thing itself as a state. – Nigel J Jan 21 '24 at 01:21
  • "Are there any differences between ‘evolutionary’ and ‘evolutional’?" - Yes, evolutionary has survived. Evolutional was used when Henry Spencer was trying to assemble the Victorian Era's version of a unified field theory. Evolution was the term for the one universal law from which all reality ensues. Evolutional was the normal adjective for this concept. The word barely survives because it's host died. I suspect evolutionary became attached to Darwinian evolution when Spencer's evolutional theory became lame. – Phil Sweet Jan 21 '24 at 02:19

2 Answers2

2

I personally think that when we use evolutionary, we're talking about progress, for example The changes were evolutionary. But when we say evolutional, it has the nuance of related to the process of evolution, for example Evolutional successor. Notice how if we say evolutionary, the nuance of the sentence immediately changes to, as someone said, something like praise. The difference is subtle, and I know it intuitively, so apologies if the answer wasn't articulate enough haha Also, take this with a grain of salt because I haven't really seen the word evolutional much, so I'm just going with my gut feeling.

Anushka Kulkarni
  • 76
  • Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center. – Community Jan 20 '24 at 14:22
  • 1
    The only dictionary definitions of evolutionary I've come across either relate to the theories (general; special) or to general change that is gradual rather than abrupt. No allusion to praiseworthiness. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 20 '24 at 14:29
  • Perhaps some people think an evolutionary* new product* is more "evolved" (read, "improved") than the somewhat cliched *revolutionary new product.* – FumbleFingers Jan 20 '24 at 14:54
  • 3
    @FumbleFingers I suspect the author of the first quote in the question was simply misuising "evolutionary" when they meant "revolutionary". It's not clear why the former would be an exclamation. – Barmar Jan 20 '24 at 17:49
  • @Barmar Ah. I think I found the answer from you right here. The author in question for both quotes is me. I misunderstood that both 'evolutionary' and 'revolutionary' mean the same thing. Whoops. – fresnir Jan 20 '24 at 21:27
  • NB: evolutionary occurs about 1,000× more often than evolutional does in modern written English. They likely have slightly different meanings as well. See also evolutive, evolvent, evolutionistic — amongst others. – tchrist Jan 20 '24 at 21:40
1

According to MWD: When used to transform a noun into and adjective, the suffixes:

  • -al: of, relating to, or characterized by
    directional; fictional

  • -ary: of, relating to, or connected with
    budgetary

The distinction is only relevant when there is a desire to emphasize that the adjective describes something that is characterized by and not connected with the noun it modifies.

For example: Evolutional Biology is a subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes that produce the diversity of life on Earth.

This seems to be an example where the distinction may properly be discerned. However, it is a restatement of the Wiki description which prefers the use of evolutionary in both places. Moreover, my browser does not recognize evolutional and redirects to search results for evolutionary biology. There is, happily, an entry for evolutional in thefreedictionary which provides links for other mentions in the wild.

Consider also - revolutional/revolutionary:

  • The discovery of penicillin had a revolutional impact on our ability to treat bacterial infections.
  • The American Revolutionary War was a military conflict that lasted from April 1775, to September 1783.

As used above, impact is more precisely described as characterized by revolution, than connected with revolution which is better used to describe the Revolutionary War in the second sentence. Again thefreedictionary has an entry for revolutional, albeit sparse, likewise MWD.

With their prominent placements in both definitions, of and relating to can serve to make the case that the two suffixes are synonymous and other factors better determine which form to use. Not even thefreedictionary has entries for budgetal, directionary, or fictionary. It’s probably something to do with their etymology, but that’s further beyond the scope of this question.

Glaadrial
  • 224
  • I can see a need to differentiate "pertaining to a revolution" from "causing a revolution" - for instance "revolutionary literature" could be literature about the American Revolution, or literature that causes a revolution in artistic expression. But I'm not sure there is a true difference between revolutionary and revolutional based on meaning, or at least not one most people agree on. – Stuart F Jan 21 '24 at 12:22