formative
Capable of forming something.
Adjective
- 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...
- 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...
Antonyms: unformative
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(biology) Capable of producing new tissue.
Antonyms: unformative
-
(linguistic morphology) Pertaining to the formation of words; specifically, of an affix: forming words through inflection.
Antonyms: unformative
- Of or pertaining to the formation and subsequent growth of something.
- My formative years were spent in an inner city.
Antonyms: unformative
- Of a form of assessment: used to guide learning rather than to quantify educational outcomes.
Coordinate Terms: summative
Origin
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.
Forms
Related
Derived
formatively formativeness neoformative neuroformative postformative preformative reformative unformative vasoformative
Noun
- 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...
- A language unit, typically a morph, that has a morphological function (that is, forming a word from a root or another word).
Hyponyms: affix
- Synonym of derivative (“a word that derives from another one”).
Synonyms: descendant reflex derivative
Origin
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).