Word.ws English Dictionary

distinctive

/dɪˈstɪŋktɪv/

distinctive adjective: distinguishing, used to or enabling the distinguishing of some thing.

Adjective

distinctive (comparative more distinctive, superlative most distinctive)

  1. Distinguishing, used to or enabling the distinguishing of some thing.
    • a product in distinctive packaging
    • Our Apparell was giuen vs as a signe distinctiue to discern betwixt sex and sex.1583, Philip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses, Folio V
  2. (rare) Discriminating, discerning, having the ability to distinguish between things.
    • […]more judicious and distinctive heads...1650, Thomas Browne, chapter 3, in Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], 2nd edition, London: […] A[braham] Miller, for Edw[ard] Dod and Nath[aniel] Ekins, […], →OCLC, 2nd book, page 75
  3. Characteristic, typical.
    • his distinctive bass voice
    • Wordsworth's distinctive work was a war with pomp and pretence, and a display of the majesty of simple feelings and humble hearts.1856, John Ruskin, Modern Painters […], volume III, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, part IV (Of Many Things), page 293
  4. (rare) Distinguished, being distinct in character or position.
    • The refugees... at length ceased to exist as a distinctive body among the people.1867, Samuel Smiles, chapter XVII, in The Huguenots, page 432
  5. (Hebrew) Used to separate clauses in place of stops.
    • These are the main distinctive accents, and by stopping at them... the reader will do justice to the sense.1874, Andrew Bruce Davidson, Introductory Hebrew Grammar, page 27
  6. Distinguishing a particular sense of word.
    • Normally we symbolize only phonemes (distinctive features) so far as we can determine them.1927, L. Bloomfield et al., Language, number 3, page 129

Noun

distinctive (plural distinctives)

  1. A distinctive thing: a quality or property permitting distinguishing; a characteristic.
    • ...the red umbrella, the distinctive of royalty here...1816, Maurice Keatinge, Travels through France and Spain to Morocco, volume I, page 189
  2. (Hebrew) A distinctive accent.
    • A distinctive of less power than Zakeph is Ṭiphḥâ.1874, Andrew Bruce Davidson, Introductory Hebrew Grammar, page 27
  3. A distinctive belief, tenet, or dogma of a denomination or sect.
    • Mennonites could go forth somewhat detached from the chauvinism of Western culture—but not so from the Mennonite distinctives.1979, Theron F. Schlabach, “Gospel versus Gospel”, in Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History, page 154

distinctive meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Malayalam

distinctive in Hindi

distinctive, differential, contrastive
व्यतिरेकी vyatirekī
distinctive
विशेष viśeṣ

distinctive in Tamil

குறிப்பிடத்தக்க, தனித்தன்மையான, வேறுபட்ட, சிறப்புடைய

distinctive in Urdu

distinctive
وشیش viśeṣ

distinctive in Malayalam

വിശേഷകമായ, സവിശേഷമായ, ഭേദിപ്പിക്കുന്ന, പ്രത്യേകമായ
More languagesFewer languages
distinctive in Sanskrit
विशेषण viśeṣaṇa

Examples of distinctive in a sentence

  • Every wine has a certain distinctive character which sets it apart from all others.
  • The capitalisation of all nouns is a distinctive feature of German.
  • These bone features, distinctive in the zebra, are actually present in all horses.

All 40 example sentences with distinctive

Forms of distinctive

Adjective
comparativemore distinctive
superlativemost distinctive
Noun
pluraldistinctives

Origin of distinctive

From Latin distinctus, perfect passive participle of distinguere (to push apart, to divide; see distinct) + -ive (forming adjectives signifying relation or tendency to). Cognate with French distinctif and Medieval Latin distinctivus.

Words formed from distinctive

Phrases with distinctive

Questions about distinctive

What does distinctive mean?
Distinctive means distinguishing, used to or enabling the distinguishing of some thing.
What is distinctive in Hindi?
Distinctive in Hindi is व्यतिरेकी (vyatirekī), विशेष (viśeṣ). See Distinctive meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is distinctive?
Distinctive can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce distinctive?
Distinctive is pronounced /dɪˈstɪŋktɪv/.

Words near distinctive in the dictionary

  1. distinctioning
  2. distinctionless
  3. distinctions
  4. distinctions without a difference
  5. distinctions without differences
  6. distinctive
  7. distinctive paper
  8. distinctive papers
  9. distinctively
  10. distinctiveness
  11. distinctivenesses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: distinctive (page history and authors); विशेष (Hindi) (page history and authors); distinctive (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); وشیش (Urdu) (page history and authors); distinctive (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); विशेषण (Sanskrit) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-distinctive.ogg.

Cite this entry: “distinctive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/distinctive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.