1. Being in accord with established forms and conventions and requirements (as e.g. of formal dress)
   "a formal ball"; "the requirement was only formal and often ignored"; "a formal education"; "pay one's formal respects"; "formal dress"
    
2. (of spoken and written language) adhering to traditional standards of correctness and without casual, contracted, and colloquial forms
   "the paper was written in formal English"
    
3. Refined or imposing in manner or appearance; befitting a royal court
   "a formal gentleman";
   - courtly, stately
    
4. Characteristic of or befitting a person in authority
   "formal duties"; "a formal banquet"
    
5. (fine arts) represented in simplified or symbolic form
   "The artist's formal drawings captured the essence of the complex machinery";
   - conventional, schematic
    
6. Logically deductive
   "formal proof"
    
7. Relating to form rather than substance
   "It was merely a formal objection"

1. [N. Amer] A gown for evening wear
   "She wore a stunning formal to the charity gala";
   - dinner dress, dinner gown, evening gown
    
2. A lavish dance requiring formal attire
   "She wore her finest gown to the annual charity formal";
   - ball

Derived forms: formals

See also: buckram, ceremonial, ceremonious, conventional, dignified, dress, formality, formalness, form-only, full-dress, literary, logical, nominal, nonrepresentational, official, perfunctory, positive, prescribed, pro forma, rhetorical, semiformal, semi-formal, starchy, stiff, titular, white-tie

Type of: dance, evening clothes, evening dress, eveningwear, formalwear, gown

Antonym: informal

Encyclopedia: Formal