English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I came across a person practicing English saying that the Fukushima nuclear plant suffered a disaster after a powerful earthquake and a "resultant tsunami".
I would have normally written it as a "resulting tsunami".
Wiktionary lists both words as adjectives, and I can't see any difference in meaning.
Is it ok to use either word? Does "resulting" sound more natural, possibly because it's more common?
As adjectives, both the words have the same meaning.
Talking of how frequently those words are used as adjectives, this is the result I get from different corpora.
| Corpus | resultant | resulting |
|---|---|---|
| Corpus of Contemporary American English | 939 (15%) | 5135 (84%) |
| British National Corpus | 426 (24%) | 1357 (76%) |
| Corpus of Canada English | 180 (17%) | 882 (83%) |
| Time Magazine Corpus | 161 (14%) | 955 (86%) |
The Time Magazine Corpus gives also information different years, and it says resultant has its highest frequency in 1930s (37), and its lowest frequency in 1990s/2000s; for resulting, its highest frequency is in 1960s (210), while its lowest frequency is in 1920s (32). As comparison, resultant's frequency in 1920s is 33.
Resultant can both be used as noun and adjective.
Example- 1) The resultant savings were considerable. (Works as ADJECTIVE)
Example- 2) The resultant of mechanical forces pulling in different directions. (Works as NOUN)
Whereas Resulting is only used as Adjective.
Example- His ignorance for his health led him to the resulting fever.
In the context you cite, either of the words can be applied as adjectvie. Both are clear in meaning. As far as the term natural goes, in this case (Comparison between resultant and resulting) there is too tiny a difference between them to label one as more "natural" and it is purely an individual's choice.
Both words would have more or less equivalent meanings. "Resultant" sounds more technical, and I don't encounter it often in non-mathematical contexts.
The second definition given by Mistu4u is also pretty obscure; I've almost always heard "vector sum".
In a political science context, Graham Allison in his Essence of Decision describes a "resultant" as "a mixture of conflicting preferences and unequal power of various individuals - distinct from what any person or group intended."
