Register
We use the term ‘register’ to refer to particular varieties or styles of speaking and writing. Registers vary because the language is used for different purposes, in different contexts and for different audiences. For example, there is a legal register, a register of advertising, registers of banking and a register of weather forecasting. We commonly recognise registers because of their specialised vocabulary but also because of particular uses of grammar. We also use the term register to refer to whether language is being used formally or informally: …
formal
noun[ C ]
uk /ˈfɔː.məl/ us /ˈfɔːr.məl/
a dance at which women wear fashionable, expensive dresses and men wear tuxedos or similar clothes一种女士身穿时髦昂贵服装、男士身穿燕尾服或类似服装起舞的舞蹈

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Celebrations, parties & special occasions
afterparty
April Fool's Day
baby shower
bachelor party
backslapping
Day of the Dead
dinner
dinner dance
Easter egg hunt
fayre
luau
masked ball
masquerade
mela
Mother's Day
sweet sixteen
tea party
trick-or-treating
Valentine's Day
wassail

formal | American Dictionary

formal
adjective
us/ˈfɔr·məl/
using an agreed and often official or traditional way of doing things:
There are formal procedures for applying to become a US citizen.
If a social occasion is formal, you wear traditional or very good clothes:
It was a formal affair, and men were supposed to wear dark suits or tuxedos.
Formal language is the language used esp. in writing in situations that are official and which is often more difficult than the language used in ordinary conversation.
Formal education/training is the learning of a subject or skill from courses in a school:
His formal education ended at the sixth grade, but he became a millionaire at the age of thirty.
formal
noun[ C ]
us/ˈfɔr·məl/
a dance at which women wear fashionable, expensive dresses and men wear tuxedos or similar clothes

formal | Business English

formal
adjective
uk /ˈfɔːməl/us
stated or agreed in writing:
a formal agreement/contract/offerThey are required to make a binding formal offer and then publish an offer document within 28 days.
done publicly or officially:
a formal announcement/discussion/investigationThe two companies began formal discussions to renegotiate the $2.8 billion power project.
used to describe clothing that is suitable for important or official occasions:
Please note that formal dress is not required at the dinner.
used to describe education or training that is received in a school or college:
Lacking formal education, he worked as a sharecropper and journeyman laborer to support his family.
ECONOMICS
used to describe businesses that are officially recognized, pay taxes, etc.:
In Mexico small and medium-sized enterprises generate six out of ten jobs in the formal sector.

formally

adverb
The bid for the company could be formally accepted early next week.

Examples of formal

formal
The procedure that we described above can be used repeatedly, until all formals have been eliminated from all functions in the program.
A formal charge of +1 was assigned to the quaternary ammonium group of acetylcholine and protonated nicotine.
Here a formal unity of the administration generally seems to have prevailed, although the administration was internally specialized.
Consequently, this conversion is not formal but substantial.
Churches had so much social influence that they did not have to establish formal political claims.
Our interest, however, is with the crystallization of that discussion into a more formal debate in the late nineteenth century.
One is a theoretical and formal issue, the other a practical problem of reconciling the demands of each.
All epistemic practices involve power, knowledge, and meaning - they all depend on technique, formal distinctions, and practical contexts that situate theory and consequence.
The so-named figurational enactments of these categories, however, provide an approximate minimum from which to begin the thinking needed for a formal taxonomy.
Clearly a psychoanalytical program of inquiry is distinct from the formal interest of this study, but it does provide some valuable insights.
The tropes of contraction are all formal or poetic mechanisms.
Tropes and figures, as discreet formal entities, can be likened to texts.
Anthropomorphized abstractions who enjoy the power of human speech entail the formal engagement of prosopopeia.
While it certainly recognizes formal complexity in the past, it tends to treat its presence there as anomalous or illicit.
Such passing back and forth between the formal and actual is precisely what formalism cannot allow.
See all examples of formal
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.