arrestive

Adjective

arrestive (comparative more arrestive, superlative most arrestive)

1. Tending to stop or slow a process.
   • Some [emotions] are Instigative, and others Arrestive.1850, James McCosh, The Method of the Divine Government, New York: Robert Caster, published 1851, Book 3, Chapter 3, p. 422
   • This reactive recoiling from something clearly in our nature is itself unnatural. It is as arrestive of emotional progress as the opposite practice of uncontrolled indulgence, which is a symptom, not a cause, of emotional immaturity.1973, Hugh Downs, chapter 11, in Potential: The Way to Emotional Maturity, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, page 188
2. (dated) Tending to capture people’s attention.
   • As fast they pressed with laboring breath,
     Clinched teeth and knitted frown,
     The sharp, arrestive cry rang out,—
     “The color-bearer’s down!”1870, Margaret Junkin Preston, “The Color-Bearer”, in Old Song and New, Philadelphia: Lippincott, p. ,144
   • I noted a curious streak of yellow in the silvered eyebrows, as if youth clung on, so to speak, by a single hair, and underneath these arrestive eyebrows green pupils alternately glowed and smouldered.1899, Israel Zangwill, “Bethulah”, in They That Walk in Darkness: Ghetto Tragedies, Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, pages 198–199

   Synonyms:

   arresting, captivating, conspicuous, remarkable, striking