explicative
explicative adjective: explanatory; serving to explain logically or in detail.
Adjective
explicative (comparative more explicative, superlative most explicative)
- Explanatory; serving to explain logically or in detail.
- The witness was explicative in telling the police what he saw.
- Synonyms:
- explicatory
Noun
explicative (plural explicatives)
- An explicative term or expression.
- For the adverſative particle [but] which follows, when he ſaith, but he emptied himſelf requires this: Otherwiſe it will not be ſo much an adverſative as an explicative, and will be taken improperly, ſed, pro, veruntamen, but for, nevertheleſs: which leads us to the conſideration of verſe 7.1669, John Tombes, “The Text Is Explained in Order to the Refelling of the Exception”, in Emmanuel; or, God-Man. […], London: […] F. Smith […], →OCLC, page 197
- Here we can explain an event by referring to something that happened long before or long after. This is the case with 19, where the tense of the explicative clauses are overtly realized and refer to points much earlier in the narrative. Thus explicatives do not necessarily serve the evaluative...1972, William Labov, “The Transformation of Experience in Narrative Syntax”, in Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular (Conduct and Communication; 3), Philadelphia, Pa....
- An expletive.
- Norfolk may yet win its battle against deletable explicatives.1974 August 8, B. Drummond Ayres Jr., “Boom Helps Norfolk, Va., to Delete Expletives About Its Past”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC
- Even if the reader is amused by the notion of Rembrandt rearranging a Cezanne to suit himself, he is unlikely to find Rembrandt’s pet explicatives – “Holy Hollandaise!” and “Great Gouda!” – anything more than feeble.1986 November 9, J[ames] Hoberman, “Children’s Books: No TV, but Check Out the Paintings”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original...
Examples of explicative in a sentence
- This is the case with 19, where the tense of the explicative clauses are overtly realized and refer to points much earlier in the narrative.1972, William Labov, “The Transformation of Experience in Narrative Syntax”, in Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English...
- As becomes clear from this example, prohibitives and normatives can be more easily located in a text than explicatives.2010, Spiros Moschonas, Jürgen Spitzmüller, “Prescriptivism in and about the media: a comparative analysis of corrective practices in...
- So when he said he was hurling “explicatives” at Vikings running back Dalvin Cook after annihilating him for no gain in the first quarter Sunday afternoon, I wasn’t about to correct him.2018 December 30, Mark Lazerus, “'You love that feeling': Hyper-aggressive Bears go for the kill, bury Vikings”, in The Athletic, New York...
Synonyms of explicative
Forms of explicative
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more explicative |
| superlative | most explicative |
| Noun | |
| plural | explicatives |
Origin of explicative
From Latin explicātīvus, from explicō (“to unfold, open out”).
Words formed from explicative
Questions about explicative
- What does explicative mean?
- Explicative means explanatory; serving to explain logically or in detail.
- How do you use explicative in a sentence?
- This is the case with 19, where the tense of the explicative clauses are overtly realized and refer to points much earlier in the narrative.
- What part of speech is explicative?
- Explicative can be an adjective or a noun.
Words near explicative in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: explicative (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “explicative.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/explicative. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.