Word.ws English Dictionary

emptive

emptive adjective: responding to or acting to counteract something when it happens (rather than beforehand).

Adjective

emptive (comparative more emptive, superlative most emptive)

  1. (rare) Responding to or acting to counteract something when it happens (rather than beforehand).
    • Mike Malone recalls how the shaving of his fiancée's head was more of an “emptive” strike, since her hair was already on its way out.2004, Marc Silver, Breast Cancer Husband: How to Help Your Wife (and Yourself) During Diagnosis, Treatment and Beyond, Rodale, →ISBN, page 227
    • Emptive priority: The service to non-priority customer is stopped as soon as a priority customer arrives.2006, A. M. Natarajan, P. Balasubramani, Operations Research, Dorling Kindersley, published 2009, →ISBN, page 498
    Synonyms:
    reactive

Synonyms of emptive

Forms of emptive

comparativemore emptive
superlativemost emptive

Origin of emptive

Back-formation from preemptive.

Questions about emptive

What does emptive mean?
Emptive means responding to or acting to counteract something when it happens (rather than beforehand).
What part of speech is emptive?
Emptive is an adjective.

Words near emptive in the dictionary

  1. emptings
  2. emptins
  3. emptio venditio
  4. emption
  5. emptional
  6. emptive
  7. emptor
  8. emptors
  9. empts
  10. empty
  11. empty as a pauper's purse

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: emptive (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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