09979 IUPAC Gold Book - nominal property 10.1351/goldbook.09979 09979 current 1 Property of a phenomenon, body, or substance, where the property has no size. 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. 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. Taxon https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/09982 PAC, 2018, 90, 913. 'Vocabulary on nominal property, examination, and related concepts for clinical laboratory sciences (IFCC-IUPAC Recommendations 2017)' on page 915 (https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2011-0613) https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/09979/html https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/09979/json https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/09979/plain Citation: 'nominal property' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.09979 The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using. 2026-05-06T18:49:40+00:00