formative
Syllables: form·at·ive/ˈfɔːmətɪv/US/ˈfoɹmətɪv/
formative adjective: capable of forming something.
Adjective
formative (comparative more formative, superlative most formative)
- Capable of forming something.
- [I]ts thought, that, in the Seed are alvvaies potentially ſeuerall indiuiduating Qualities deriu'd from diuers of the neere Anceſtors, vvhich by the formatiue povver of the Parents may be expreſt in the Children, vvith reſpectiue habitude to either Sex; […]1614, John Selden, “The Preface”, in Titles of Honor, London: […] William Stansby for Iohn Helme, […], →OCLC, signature [b4], recto
- Hybrids, […] have their reproductive organs functionally impotent, as may be clearly seen in the state of the male element in both plants and animals; though the formative organs themselves are perfect in structure, as far as the microscope reveals.1866, Charles Darwin, “Hybridism”, in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, […], 4th edition, London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, page 293
- Antonyms:
- unformative
- Of or pertaining to the formation and subsequent growth of something.
- My formative years were spent in an inner city.
- Antonyms:
- unformative
- Of a form of assessment: used to guide learning rather than to quantify educational outcomes.
Noun
formative (plural formatives)
- A thing which causes formation to occur.
- [T]his museum of the state of flux [Newmarket, Suffolk] has a climate unrivalled for the production of the British temperament. Not without a due proportion of that essential formative of character, east wind, it has at once the hottest sun, the coldest blizzards, the wettest rain, of any place of...1907, John Galsworthy, “The Happy Hunting-ground”, in The Country House, London: William Heinemann, →OCLC, part I, page 33
- A language unit, typically a morph, that has a morphological function (that is, forming a word from a root or another word).
- Synonym of derivative (“a word that derives from another one”).
- Synonyms:
- descendant, reflex, derivative
formative meaning in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Punjabi
formative in Tamil
- ஆக்கி, ஆக்கும்
formative in Malayalam
- developmental, developing, growing
- രൂപദായകമായ, രൂപീകരണത്തെ സഹായിക്കുന്ന, വികസ്വര, വളർന്നുവരുന്ന, ഉന്മിഷത്ത്, വളർച്ചയെ സംബന്ധിച്ച
- controlling, determining, influential
- രൂപീകരണത്തെ സഹായിക്കുന്ന, നിയന്തൃ, നിയന്ത്രിക്കുന്ന, സ്വാധീനിക്കുന്ന, മാർഗ്ഗനിർദ്ദേശകമായ, നിർണ്ണായക
formative in Kannada
- ರೂಪಿಸಲು ಸಹಾಯಕವಾಗುವ, ರಚನೆಗೆ ಮುಂಚಿನ, ಬೆಳೆಯುವ
formative in Punjabi
- ਫਾਰਮੇਟਿਵ
More languagesFewer languages
- formative in Nepali
- गठनशील
- formative in Indonesian
- formatif
Examples of formative in a sentence
- Light music was especially popular during the formative years of radio broadcasting.
- Despite my mother speaking Khmer to us at home, I hadn’t retained it through my formative years.
- This was the first episode of Degrassi I saw, and it was a formative episode.
Synonyms of formative
Antonyms
Forms of formative
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more formative |
| superlative | most formative |
| Noun | |
| plural | formatives |
Origin of formative
From Middle English formatyve, formatif (“having the ability to form”), from Old French formatif, formative (modern French formatif), from Medieval Latin formātīvus, from Latin fōrmātus + -īvus (suffix forming adjectives with the sense ‘doing’ or ‘related to doing’). Fōrmātus is the perfect passive participle of fōrmō (“to form, to shape”), from fōrma (“a form, shape”); further etymology uncertain, possibly related to Ancient Greek μορφή (morphḗ, “a form, shape”) (see further at that entry). By surface analysis, form + -ative.
Etymology 2 sense 1 (“thing which causes formation to occur”) is derived from the noun. Etymology 2 sense 2.1 (“language unit”) is borrowed from German Formativ, a noun use of formativ (adjective), from Middle French formatif, from Old French formatif (see etymology 1).
Words formed from formative
Words that rhyme with formative
Questions about formative
- What does formative mean?
- Formative means capable of forming something.
- What is formative in Tamil?
- Formative in Tamil is ஆக்கி, ஆக்கும். See Formative meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is formative?
- Formative can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce formative?
- Formative is pronounced /ˈfɔːmətɪv/ (UK).
Words near formative in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: formative (page history and authors); formative (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); formative (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); formative (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); formative (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); formative (Nepali, 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-formative.wav.
Cite this entry: “formative.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/formative. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.