of, relating to, or tending to: authoritative, decorative, informative
WordReference Random House Learner's Dictionary of American English © 2025
-ative, suffix. -ative is attached to some verbs
WordReference Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English © 2025- (some of which end in -ate) and nouns to form adjectives: regulate + -ative → regulative (= with the power to regulate);
norm (= rule) + -ative → normative[(= having rules).]
-ative,
- a combination of -ate 1 and -ive, used to form adjectives from stems in -ate 1 (regulative);
on this model, because of the frequency and productivity of -ate 1, used independently to form adjectives from stems of other origin:normative.
- Latin -ātīvus, equivalent. to -āt(us) -ate1 + -īvus -ive
Collins Concise English Dictionary © HarperCollins Publishers::
'-ative' also found in these entries (note: many are not synonyms or translations):
Conservative Baptist
- Conservative Jew
- Conservative Judaism
- Conservative party
- affirmative action
- affirmative flag
- alimentative
- alpha privative
- alterative
- anticonservative
- argumentative
- assort
- assortative mating
- augmentative
- authoritative
- blood relation
- calmative
- categorical imperative
- comparative advertising
- comparative government
- comparative linguistics
- comparative literature
- comparative method
- comparative musicology
- comparative philology
- comparative psychology
- comparative religion
- comparative statement
- confirmatory
- conspiracy
- copy negative
- correlative conjunction
- definite relative clause
- definite relative pronoun
- deform
- deverbative
- directional derivative
- disassortative mating
- double negative
- explanatory
- exploit
- exploratory
- first derivative
- fixative
- formative element
- functional imperative
- grooved fricative
- half-conservative
- half-provocative