Anecdotal means based on single stories rather than evidence. Anecdotal evidence, purely anecdotal, the evidence is anecdotal.
Calling something anecdotal is a criticism of how it was gathered, not of whether it is true — an anecdotal report can be perfectly accurate and still prove nothing, because nobody chose the cases fairly. Individual stories persuade far better than statistics, which is exactly the problem.
1adjectiveanecdotalBased on single stories rather than gathered evidence.
“The evidence is only anecdotal, so we need a proper study before we believe it.”
anecdotal is a quality of evidence.
Proto-Indo-European
*deh₃-
Ancient Greek
ἀνέκδοτος — accounts unpublished
French
anecdote
English
anecdote
English, today
anecdotal
Built from
From anecdote + -al. anecdote Late 17th c., from French anecdote, from Ancient Greek ἀνέκδοτος (“accounts unpublished”), from ἀν- (“not, un-”) + ἔκδοτος (“published”), from ἐκδίδωμι (“I publish”), from ἐκ- (“out”) + δίδωμι (“I give”). Virtually identical cognates in other European languages – French anecdote, German Anekdote, Spanish anécdota, among others.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA