corrective

Something that corrects or counteracts something.

Adjective

  1. Of or pertaining to correction; serving to correct.
    • As the currents were changing rapidly, the captain had to make many corrective course changes.
    • Since the accident I've had to wear a corrective brace.
    • Alway remember, that yf any other humour do abounde in the choleryke persone, as fleume, or melancolye, than vntyll that humour be expelled, the diete must be correctiue of that humour, and therfore more hotte and fyne,...
  2. Qualifying; limiting.
    • The Psalmist interposeth a caution in this corrective particle, Yea, Happy. It hath the force of a revocation, whereby he seems to retract what went before, not simply and absolutely, but in a certain degree […] - 1642,...

Origin

Borrowed from French correctif, equivalent to correct + -ive.

Derived

autocorrective corrective facility corrective lens correctively correctiveness corrective rape corrective shoe hypercorrective postcorrective

Noun

  1. Something that corrects or counteracts something.
    • alkalies are correctives of acids
    • penalties are correctives of immoral conduct
    • […] To make Courts hot ambitions wholesome, do not take A dramme of Countries dulnesse; do not adde Correctives, but as chymiques, purge the bad. - c. 1598, John Donne, “To Sir Henry Wotton”, in Poems, London: John...
  2. Limitation; restriction.
    • What Correctives there may be supposed that may check and restrain that Increase of Mankind, that otherwise according to the ordinary course of Nature would have obtained in the World. - 1677, Matthew Hale, chapter 7,...
    • It is a maxim established upon good reason, that every thing exceeding its just bounds, is hurtful to nature. The best of things are not excepted in this general rule. Even the necessary supports of life, if not...

Forms

correctives