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informal

If something’s informal, it’s casual and relaxed and doesn’t follow any particular rules or conventions, whether that's a style of writing, or the dress code for your dinner party.

If you have informal plans to see your friend, that means you’ll get together but you’re not sure when — you’ll figure it out later. Informal also means “casual,” like wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Informal writing or speech is the linguistic equivalent of wearing jeans and a t-shirt, with a relaxed tone and simple words. In an informal football club, you don't pay dues to anyone, you just show up at the park and play with whoever is there.

DEFINITIONS OF: informal

1

adj not formal

“conservative people unaccustomed to informal dress”
“an informal free-and-easy manner”
“an informal gathering of friends”
Synonyms
casual, daily, everyday
appropriate for ordinary or routine occasions
casual, free-and-easy
natural and unstudied
folksy
very informal and familiar
unceremonial, unceremonious
without ceremony or formality
Antonyms:
formal
being in accord with established forms and conventions and requirements (as e.g. of formal dress)
conventional
following accepted customs and proprieties
ceremonial
marked by pomp or ceremony or formality
ceremonious, conventional
rigidly formal or bound by convention
dress, full-dress
(of an occasion) requiring formal clothes
form-only
being a matter of form only; lacking substance
dress, full-dress
suitable for formal occasions
nominal, titular
existing in name only
positive, prescribed
formally laid down or imposed
perfunctory, pro forma
as a formality only
black-tie, semi-formal, semiformal
moderately formal; requiring a dinner jacket
buckram, starchy, stiff
rigidly formal
white-tie
requiring white ties and tailcoats for men
formal
(of spoken and written language) adhering to traditional standards of correctness and without casual, contracted, and colloquial forms
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adj having or fostering a warm or friendly and informal atmosphere

“a relaxed informal manner”
Synonyms:
cozy, intimate
friendly
characteristic of or befitting a friend

adj not officially recognized or controlled

“an informal agreement”
Synonyms:
loose
unofficial
not having official authority or sanction

adj used of spoken and written language

Synonyms
colloquial, conversational
characteristic of informal spoken language or conversation
common, vernacular, vulgar
being or characteristic of or appropriate to everyday language
epistolary, epistolatory
written in the form of or carried on by letters or correspondence
slangy
constituting or expressed in slang or given to the use of slang
subliterary
not written as or intended to be literature
nonliterary, unliterary
marked by lack of affectation or pedantry
unrhetorical
not rhetorical
Antonyms:
formal
(of spoken and written language) adhering to traditional standards of correctness and without casual, contracted, and colloquial forms
formal
being in accord with established forms and conventions and requirements (as e.g. of formal dress)
literary
appropriate to literature rather than everyday speech or writing
rhetorical
given to rhetoric, emphasizing style at the expense of thought
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