formative
noun
No English definition recorded for this entry.
L320911 on Wikidata ↗adjective
- happening in early life
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ˈfɔːmətɪv/ / /ˈfoɹmətɪv/ / [-ɾɪv]
adj
Etymology: From Middle English formatyve, formatif (“having the ability to form”), from Old French formatif, formative (modern French formatif), from Medieval Latin formātīvus, from Latin fōrmātus + -īvus (suffix forming adjectives with the sense ‘doing’ or ‘related to doing’). Fōrmātus is the perfect passive participle of fōrmō (“to form, to shape”), from fōrma (“a form, shape”); further etymology uncertain, possibly related to Ancient Greek μορφή (morphḗ, “a form, shape”) (see further at that entry). By surface analysis, form + -ative.
- Capable of forming something.
“[I]ts thought, that, in the Seed are alvvaies potentially ſeuerall indiuiduating Qualities deriu'd from diuers of the neere Anceſtors, vvhich by the formatiue povver of the Parents may be expreſt in the Children, vvith reſpectiue habitude to either Sex; […]”
“Hybrids, […] have their reproductive organs functionally impotent, as may be clearly seen in the state of the male element in both plants and animals; though the formative organs themselves are perfect in structure, as far as the microscope reveals.”
- Capable of forming something.
- Capable of forming something.
- Of or pertaining to the formation and subsequent growth of something.
“My formative years were spent in an inner city.”
- Of a form of assessment: used to guide learning rather than to quantify educational outcomes.
noun
Etymology: Etymology 2 sense 1 (“thing which causes formation to occur”) is derived from the noun. Etymology 2 sense 2.1 (“language unit”) is borrowed from German Formativ, a noun use of formativ (adjective), from Middle French formatif, from Old French formatif (see etymology 1).
- A thing which causes formation to occur.
“[T]his museum of the state of flux [Newmarket, Suffolk] has a climate unrivalled for the production of the British temperament. Not without a due proportion of that essential formative of character, east wind, it has at once the hottest sun, the coldest blizzards, the wettest rain, of any place of its size in 'the three kingdoms.'”
- A language unit, typically a morph, that has a morphological function (that is, forming a word from a root or another word).
- Synonym of derivative (“a word that derives from another one”).