Evidential

Evidential is an adjective meaning relating to evidence, or to the use of evidence in support of a claim. In philosophy and epistemology, evidential concerns focus on how evidence supports or undermines beliefs, including questions about the reliability, sufficiency, and relevance of evidence. In law and forensic science, the term is used to describe materials, arguments, or methods that bear on establishing facts or connecting claims to proof; evidential standards determine what constitutes admissible or persuasive material.

In linguistics, evidentiality is a prominent area of study. An evidential is an element—such as a grammatical marker, particle, or verb form—that encodes how the information was obtained. Common categories include direct evidence (experience or observation), reported speech or hearsay, inference, and deduction. Languages vary widely in how many evidential distinctions they encode and how they realize them morphologically or syntactically. The study of evidentiality helps explain how speakers communicate the source and credibility of information, as well as how listeners interpret statements.

In everyday usage, "evidential" can describe anything that serves as evidence for or against a proposition. The related noun "evidence" and the noun "evidentiality" describe the concept and its linguistic realization, while "evidentiary" is often used in legal contexts to describe things pertaining to evidence.

See also: evidence, evidentiality, evidential marker, epistemology.