Word.ws English Dictionary

divisive

/dɪˈvaɪsɪv/US/dɪˈvaɪsɪv/

divisive adjective: having a quality that divides or separates.

Adjective

divisive (comparative more divisive, superlative most divisive)

  1. Having a quality that divides or separates.
    • Rather than fostering unity, he becomes divisive.
    • [W]hat a change has introduced itself everywhere into human affairs! [...] all is grown acrid, divisive, threatening dissolution; [...]1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, chapter 6, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book II (The Ancient Monk), page 66
    Antonyms:
    unifying

divisive meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

divisive in Urdu

تفرقہ انگیز, تفرقہ خیز

divisive in Bengali

বিভাজনমূলক

divisive in Malayalam

having a quality that divides or separates
ഭിന്നിപ്പിക്കുന്ന bhinnippikkunna

divisive in Kannada

ಒಡಕುಂಟು ಮಾಡುವ, ಭೇದ ಕಲ್ಪಿಸುವ, ವಿಭಾಗಿಸುವ
More languagesFewer languages
divisive in Gujarati
વિભાજનકારી

Examples of divisive in a sentence

  • “I’ve always been quite a Marmite personality,” she says, comparing herself to the divisive umami toast spread.
  • The most powerful and least divisive way to decrease abortion is to reduce unintended pregnancy.
  • Issues that are already hotly contested become even more divisive in the context of social balkanization.

All 16 example sentences with divisive

Synonyms of divisive

Antonyms

Forms of divisive

comparativemore divisive
superlativemost divisive

Origin of divisive

Borrowed from Latin dīvīsīvus.

Words formed from divisive

Words that rhyme with divisive

Questions about divisive

What does divisive mean?
Divisive means having a quality that divides or separates.
What is divisive in Urdu?
Divisive in Urdu is تفرقہ انگیز, تفرقہ خیز. See Divisive meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is divisive?
Divisive is an adjective.
How do you pronounce divisive?
Divisive is pronounced /dɪˈvaɪsɪv/ (UK).

Words near divisive in the dictionary

  1. divisionistic
  2. divisionists
  3. divisionless
  4. divisionlessness
  5. divisions
  6. divisive
  7. divisively
  8. divisiveness
  9. divisivenesses
  10. diviso
  11. divisome

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: divisive (page history and authors); divisive (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); divisive (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); divisive (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); divisive (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-divisive.wav.

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