a. [f. STRUCTURE sb. + -AL.] Of or pertaining to structure.
1. Of or pertaining to the art or practice of building. Chiefly in structural iron, steel, iron or steel intended for building construction.
1867. Burton, Hist. Scot., ii. (1873), I. 53. The rise of structural skill in Scotland.
1895. Current Hist., V. 608. The great demand was for structural iron and steel.
1902. Westm. Gaz., 21 May, 8/2. Structural steel.
b. fig. Pertaining to the art of literary construction. rare.
1870. Lowell, Study Wind. (1871), 188. Chaucer … had a structural faculty which distinguishes him from all other English poets, his contemporaries.
2. Of or pertaining to the structure of a building as distinguished from its decoration or fittings. Structural load (see quot. 1888).
1877. J. D. Chambers, Div. Worship, 1. Structural and other requisites for Divine Worship.
a. 1878. Scott, Lect. Archit. (1879), I. 69. It was my endeavour to illustrate the mechanical and structural portion of the process.
1879. Cassell’s Techn. Educ., I. 183. The general rule, however, is that carpenters’ work is structural, and connected with the carcase, whilst that of a joiner comprehends the finishings of the outside and inside of a building.
1886. Conder, Syrian Stone-Lore, ii. (1896), 103. By careful examination I found that the arches near the great reservoir were not structural but false.
1888. Lockwood’s Dict. Mech. Engin., Structural Load, the load due to a structure itself, as distinguished from the imposed load.
1912. T. D. Atkinson, Cathedrals, 180. The great structural supports of a nave, of course, really run through from floor to roof, although, perhaps, only a few small shafts appear to do so. These supports Wykeham retained.
fig. 1904. S. H. Butcher, Harvard Lect., 200. The subject-matter of poetry is the universal—that which is abiding and structural in humanity.
3. Of or pertaining to the arrangement and mutual relation of the parts of any complex unity.
1870. Yeats, Nat. Hist. Comm., 7. All raw substances contain within them structural evidences of the conditions under which they were developed.
1873. Hamerton, Intell. Life, III. x. 129. We learn several languages by perceiving their structural relations, and remembering these.
1874. W. Spottiswoode, Polarisation of Light, vi. 76. The mechanical strain has imparted to portions of the glass a structural character analogous … to that of a crystal.
1874. Hartwig’s Aerial World, ii. 24. Having obtained a knowledge of the various gaseous substances which compose the atmosphere, we will now cast a glimpse on their structural arrangement.
1884. trans. Lotze’s Logic, Introd. 7. If, again, a tool is to fit the hand, it must have such other structural properties as make it easy to grasp.
1887. Athenæum, 8 Oct., 463/1. Singleton here … passes at once from the attitude of the eye-witness to the attitude of the chronicler, and tells the story … by the historical method. Nor was there any structural need for him to do this; he could have [etc.].
4. In various scientific uses.
a. Phys. and Path. Of or pertaining to the organic structure of an animal or plant, or a portion of an animal or vegetable body.
1845. Budd, Dis. Liver, 202. No structural lesion of the brain.
1862. H. Spencer, First Princ., II. xiii. § 104 (1875), 302. The structural modifiability of an adult man is greater than that of an old man.
1863. Huxley, Man’s Place in Nat., ii. 103. The structural differences which separate Man from the Gorilla and the Chimpanzee.
1877. J. A. Allen, Amer. Bison, 488. In the structural character of the teeth themselves there is nothing that positively settles the question of their identity.
1880. Bastian, Brain, i. 21. The localization of the path of the stimulus leads to structural results of another kind.
1898. Syd. Soc. Lex., Structural disease, one involving tissue and causing change visible to the naked eye or the microscope; also organic disease in contradistinction to functional disease.
Comb. 1901. Amer. Jrnl. Psychol., XII. 598. The structural-functional psychology question.
b. Geol. Pertaining to the structure of the earth’s crust, of a rock, formation, mountain, or the like.
1855. Orr’s Circ. Sci., Inorg. Nat., 57. The phenomena just described are called structural, as affecting the intimate structure of the mass, and not merely its external form.
1862. Dana, Man. Geol., IV. vi. 735. There are three elements at the base of the earth’s features. First a geographical one…; the second, structural,—the system of cleavage-structure; the third dynamical.
1893. B. Willis, in 13th Ann. Rep. U.S. Geol. Surv., II. 224. In the Appalachian province there are four districts, each of which is distinguished from the others by a prevailing structural type.
c. Of a branch of a science: Concerned with the study of the structures of natural products.
Structural botany: botany dealing with the structure and organization of plants. Structural chemistry: chemistry treating of the arrangement or order of attachment of atoms in the molecules of compounds. Structural geology: geology dealing with the method of the formation of the rocks that constitute the earth’s crust; also called geotectonic geology.
1835. Lindley (title), A Key to structural, physiological, and systematic Botany.
1849. Balfour, Man. Bot., 1. Structural Botany, or Organography, which has reference to the textures of which plants are composed, and to the forms of the various organs.
1882. Geikie, Text-bk. Geol., IV. 474. Geotectonic (Structural) Geology, or the architecture of the earth’s crust.
1907. Nature, 24 Oct., 654/1. Structural chemistry, moreover, is slowly acquiring the mastery over cholesterin by making use of the experience afforded by the synthetic study of the hydroaromatic substances.
Hence Structurality rare–0, structural quality or character.
1895. in Funk’s Stand. Dict.
1909. Century Dict., Suppl.
