Word.ws English Dictionary

defunctive

defunctive adjective: funereal or deathly.

Adjective

defunctive (comparative more defunctive, superlative most defunctive)

  1. (archaic) funereal or deathly
    • Let the priest in surplice white/That defunctive music can/ Be the death-divining swan/ Lest the requiem lack his right.1601, William Shakespeare, The Phoenix and the Turtle
    • The road was now a black tunnel floored with the impalpable defunctive glare of the sand.1931, William Faulkner, Sanctuary, Library of America, published 1985, page 13

Forms of defunctive

comparativemore defunctive
superlativemost defunctive

Origin of defunctive

From Latin defunctivus, from dēfūnctiō (“execution, performance, death”), from dēfungor (“to finish, perform, die”).

Questions about defunctive

What does defunctive mean?
Defunctive means funereal or deathly.
What part of speech is defunctive?
Defunctive is an adjective.

Words near defunctive in the dictionary

  1. defunctionalized
  2. defunctionalizes
  3. defunctionalizing
  4. defunctioning
  5. defunctions
  6. defunctive
  7. defunctness
  8. defuncts
  9. defund
  10. defunded
  11. defunder

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: defunctive (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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