Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
consequential, inconsequential (adjs.)
Consequential means “of consequence” and hence “important,” whether applied to people, as in She’s a good actress and a consequential one, actions, as in His speech was not a consequential one, and the press scarcely reported it at all, or things, as in That white limousine looks consequential, just the thing to carry an aspiring candidate. In the case of people, it may also mean “self-important,” as in She kept casting consequential glances at those around her, but nobody seemed curious about what they meant. Inconsequential is an antonym of consequential and means “unimportant, trivial”; it is a much higher frequency word: Both she and her ideas are inconsequential, so nobody pays any attention to either.
