That's close to what I meant. Closer would be: Clojure def is imperative because the semantics are defined mechanically, leaving fewer implementation details

That's close to what I meant. Closer would be: Clojure def is imperative because the semantics are defined mechanically, leaving fewer implementation details up to the implementer. http://clojure.org/special_forms#Special http://clojure.org/special_forms#Special Forms--(def symbol init?) Haskell toplevel function definitions are more declarative because the semantics are defined less concretely. https://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/users_guide/informal-semantics.html https://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/users_guide/inf... This is what I meant. I did not mean to start a flame war about the definition of declarative. It's more about different approaches to language design.