What does “nominally” mean?

nominally


Oh, this is a good one —

"Nominally" means something is true in name or on paper, but not really true in real life. Like, it exists officially, but the reality is different.

So imagine a country has a king, but the king has zero real power — the government makes all the decisions. You could say "He is nominally the king." He has the title, but that's kind of it.

Or like, "They are nominally friends" — they call each other friends, but they never talk, never hang out. It's just a label.

You can also say "The meeting was nominally about work, but really everyone just talked about the weekend."

So basically — nominally = in name only, not really in practice. It's a little bit of a "yeah, technically… but not really" word! 😄

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