normal

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   conforming with or constituting a norm or standard or level or type or social norm

   not abnormal

2. 2
   adj

   being approximately average or within certain limits in e.g. intelligence and development

   a perfectly normal child

3. 3
   adj

   According to norms or rules or to a regular pattern.

   Organize the data into third normal form.

4. 4
   adj

   Usual, healthy; not sick or ill or unlike oneself.

   John is feeling normal again.

5. 5
   adj

   Teaching teachers how to teach; teaching teachers the norms of education.

   My grandmother attended Mankato State Normal School; my grandfather attended Illinois State Normal University.

6. 6
   adj

   Perpendicular to a tangent of a curve or tangent plane of a surface.

   The interior normal vector of a perfect sphere always point toward the center, and the exterior normal vector directly away, and both are always collinear with the ray whose tip ends at the point of intersection, which is the intersection of all three sets of points.

7. 7
   noun

   A person who is healthy, normal, as opposed to one who is morbid.

   Subjects were grouped as Group 1 and Group 2 according to VAI, and normals, overweights and obeses according to BMI.

8. 8
   noun

   The usual state.

   I was quite ill for a while, but latterly seem to have returned to normal.

Etymology

Etymology tree Latin norma Proto-Indo-European *h₂el-der.? Proto-Italic *-ālis Latin -ālis Latin nōrmālisder. English normal From Latin normālis (“made according to a carpenter's square; later: according to a rule”), from nōrma (“carpenter's square”), of uncertain origin; doublet of normale. The earliest meaning of the word in English was "perpendicular; forming a right angle" like something normālis (“made according to a carpenter's square”), but by Late Latin normālis had also come to mean "according to a rule", from which modern English senses of the word derive: in the 1800s, as people beg…