nominale

Nominale is a term used across several languages to describe things that are named, stated, or assigned as value, rather than reflecting actual or real conditions. In German and Italian, for example, the word is used in reference to nominal values or forms, such as the face value of a financial instrument or the basic, named form of a word. In English, the related concept is usually expressed as nominal, while nominals appear in language-specific technical usage.

In economics and finance, nominal values are the stated, face, or monetary values of instruments or currencies before adjustment for inflation or other factors. The nominal interest rate is the stated rate on a loan or investment, not corrected for inflation. By contrast, real values account for changes in purchasing power. Nominal values are essential for contracts, accounting, and standard reporting, but they can mislead if inflation or deflation is ignored.

In linguistics, nominal or nominals describe the category of nouns and noun phrases. The term nominal is used to designate words and phrases that function as names of entities. Nominalization is the process of turning verbs or adjectives into nouns. In many languages, nominals form a core part of syntax and morphology, and the word nominale is used in some languages to reference this noun-related class.

In data measurement, nominal data are a basic type of categorical data where categories have no inherent order or ranking, such as color, brand, or type. This contrasts with ordinal, interval, or ratio data, which encode increasing magnitude or quantity.

Etymology and usage: from Latin nomen, name. The precise meaning of nomine or nominals varies by language and discipline, so context is important.