aversive
aversive adjective: tending to repel; causing avoidance.
Adjective
aversive (comparative more aversive, superlative most aversive)
- Tending to repel; causing avoidance.
- "I say—Nora, you, really you?" he cried, transported in turn, and to do him justice he did not seem to notice anything aversive in her disorder—or, indeed, to notice anything but her excited young face.1934, Ernest Bramah, The Bravo of London
- If it is aversive to the animal and discourages behavior, it is a punishment. If it seems aversive to you but is not aversive to the animal, then it is not an effective punishment. In fact, technically, it's not even a punishment.2015, Ilona Rodan, Sarah Heath, editors, Feline Behavioral Health and Welfare, Elsevier Health Sciences, →ISBN, page 47
Noun
aversive (plural aversives)
- A grammatical case indicating that something is avoided or feared; the evitative case.
- An unpleasant stimulus intended to induce a change in behaviour.
- For general training purposes, opportunities to engage in reproductive acts are not a practical reinforcer, and using aversives that generate fear is fraught with side effects.2015, Ilona Rodan, Sarah Heath, editors, Feline Behavioral Health and Welfare, Elsevier Health Sciences, →ISBN, page 53
Forms of aversive
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more aversive |
| superlative | most aversive |
| Noun | |
| plural | aversives |
Words formed from aversive
Words that rhyme with aversive
- recursive
- cursive
- immersive
- adversive
- animadversive
- conversive
- discursive
- dispersive
- excursive
- introversive
- semicursive
- subversive
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- abstersive
- antidiscursive
- antisubversive
- aspersive
- co-recursive
- compersive
- contraversive
- corecursive
- counterdiscursive
- countersubversive
- cyberdiscursive
- detersive
- electrodispersive
- eversive
- extroversive
- immunosubversive
- incursive
- interconversive
- interdiscursive
- inversive
- ipsiversive
- left-recursive
- macrodiscursive
- metadiscursive
- microdiscursive
- monodispersive
- nonaversive
- noncursive
- nondiscursive
- nondispersive
- nonimmersive
- nonrecursive
- nonsubversive
- overdispersive
- perversive
- photoaversive
- polydispersive
- precursive
- primitive recursive
- proaversive
- procursive
- pursive
- reversive
- Roman cursive
- semiodiscoursive
- submersive
- subrecursive
- superrecursive
Questions about aversive
- What does aversive mean?
- Aversive means tending to repel; causing avoidance.
- What part of speech is aversive?
- Aversive can be an adjective or a noun.
Words near aversive in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: aversive (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “aversive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/aversive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.