denominative
/di-ˈnä-mə-nə-tiv/
denominative adjective: being a name.
Adjective
denominative (not comparable)
- Being a name.
- From the fact that this was the most noticeable feature in their costume, the name came naturally to be the denominative term of the tribe.1885, William Philo Clark, The Indian Sign Language, page 283
- Possessing, or capable of possessing, a distinct denomination or designation; denominable.
- The least denominative part of time is a second.1678, J. Hawkins, Cocker's Arithm., ii. 29
- Deriving from a noun, or from an adjective, such as the verb destruct from the noun destruction.
- Synonyms:
- denominal
Noun
denominative (plural denominatives)
Synonyms of denominative
Forms of denominative
| plural | denominatives |
|---|
Origin of denominative
From Late Latin dēnōminātīvus, a calque of Ancient Greek παρώνυμος (parṓnumos, “derivative”). It originally had the meaning “derived”, but in its grammatical sense, it has developed the meaning “from a noun”, perhaps a reinterpretation of the Latin morphemes that it consists of: the preposition dē (“from”) and the stem of nōmen (“name, noun”).
Words formed from denominative
Questions about denominative
- What does denominative mean?
- Denominative means being a name.
- What part of speech is denominative?
- Denominative can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce denominative?
- Denominative is pronounced /di-ˈnä-mə-nə-tiv/ (US).
Words near denominative in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: denominative (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: “denominative.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/denominative. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.