Word.ws English Dictionary

compulsative

compulsative adjective: compulsatory; employing force or constraint.

Adjective

compulsative (not comparable)

  1. (obsolete) Compulsatory; employing force or constraint.
    • But to recouer of vs by ſtrong hand / And termes Compulſatiue, thoſe foreſaid Landsc. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...
    • The infernall powers appeaſed with ſacrifice, prayers, and tedious murmurings (words ſoftly muttered barbarous and vnſignificant, leaſt they ſhould diſturbe the Imagination: although held by the deluded of a compulſative power) Medea cauſeth Æſon to be brought forth: […]1632, G[eorge] S[andys], “Vpon the Seaventh Booke […] ”, in Ovid, translated by G[eorge] S[andys], Ovid’s Metamorphosis Englished, Mythologiz’d, And Repreſented in Figures, Oxford: Iohn Lichfield...

Origin of compulsative

From Late Latin compulsāt-, participial stem of compulsāre, intensitive form of Latin compellere (“to compel”).

Words formed from compulsative

Questions about compulsative

What does compulsative mean?
Compulsative means compulsatory; employing force or constraint.
What part of speech is compulsative?
Compulsative is an adjective.

Words near compulsative in the dictionary

  1. comptrols
  2. compts
  3. compucondria
  4. compulsarily
  5. compulsary
  6. compulsative
  7. compulsatively
  8. compulsatorily
  9. compulsatory
  10. compulse
  11. compulsed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: compulsative (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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