https://doi.org/10.1351/goldbook.09979
Property of a phenomenon, body, or substance, where the property has no size.
Examples:
- Colour at a specified lighting of a given leaf of a plant.
- Sequence variation of nucleotides of a given gene.
- Taxon of a bacterium in a given sample of urine.
- Shape of the nucleus of a given white blood cell.
Notes:
- The concept "nominal property" is defined as the opposite of "quantity", i.e. the former concept lacks the essential characteristic of "size" (or "magnitude"). In such cases, ISO 704:2009-6.5.4 allows a "negative definition".
- The term "attribute" has sometimes been used to designate "nominal property", but not here.
- The term "qualitative property" is also used, but not here as it is ambiguous because "ordinal quantity" is often included under that term.
- "Nominal property" is sometimes termed "nameable property", but not here.