Word.ws English Dictionary

exercitive

exercitive adjective: having the character of an exercitive act.

Adjective

exercitive (comparative more exercitive, superlative most exercitive)

  1. Having the character of an exercitive act.

Noun

exercitive (plural exercitives)

  1. (hermeneutics) A speech act in which a decision is made regarding action; examples include orders and grants of permission.
    • An exercitive is the giving of a decision in favour of or against a certain course of action, or advocacy of it.1962, J.L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words (paperback), Oxford, published 1965, page 154
    • Exercitives are not so common. Philosopher-authors are rarely in the position to tell people what to do or think.1999, Jeffrey A. Mason, The Philosopher's Address: Writing and the Perception of Philosophy, →ISBN, page 51

Forms of exercitive

Adjective
comparativemore exercitive
superlativemost exercitive
Noun
pluralexercitives

Questions about exercitive

What does exercitive mean?
Exercitive means having the character of an exercitive act.
What part of speech is exercitive?
Exercitive can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near exercitive in the dictionary

  1. exercisings
  2. exercitant
  3. exercitants
  4. exercitation
  5. exercitations
  6. exercitive
  7. exercitives
  8. exercycle
  9. exercycles
  10. exeresis
  11. exergame

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: exercitive (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: “exercitive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/exercitive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.