Describing education or training that teaches you the actual skills of a job — cooking, nursing, car repair, hairdressing, welding, programming — rather than general academic subjects. A vocational school, a vocational course, vocational training: all mean you go in to learn how to do work and come out able to do it. The word is neutral in tone, and in Britain and Taiwan it is the ordinary official word; in some American conversation it can carry a faint sense of "not university", which is worth knowing but not worth repeating. There is a second, less common use tied to its root: "vocational" can mean related to a vocation, that is, a calling — the deep sense that a certain kind of work is what you are for. You see this mostly in religious writing and in careers advice, as in "a vocational choice". Almost all the English you meet will be the first use.