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1. Being in accord with established forms and conventions and requirements (as e.g. of formal dress)
   "pay one's formal respects"; "formal dress"; "a formal ball"; "the requirement was only formal and often ignored"; "a formal education"
    
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. Characteristic of or befitting a person in authority
   "formal duties"; "a formal banquet"
    
4. (fine arts) represented in simplified or symbolic form
   - conventional, schematic
    
5. Logically deductive
   "formal proof"
    
6. Refined or imposing in manner or appearance; befitting a royal court
   "a formal gentleman";
   - courtly, stately

1. A lavish dance requiring formal attire
   - ball
    
2. [N. Amer] A gown for evening wear
   - dinner dress, dinner gown, evening gown

Derived forms: formals

See also: black-tie, 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