Word.ws English Dictionary

percussive

Syllables: per·cuss·ive/pəˈkʌsɪv/US/pɚˈkʌsɪv/

percussive adjective: characterized by percussion; caused by or related to the action of striking or pounding something.

Adjective

percussive (comparative more percussive, superlative most percussive)

  1. Characterized by percussion; caused by or related to the action of striking or pounding something.
    • He massaged her shoulders with a gentle percussive action.
    • As argued by Dr. Burney, and as implied by the customs of still extant barbarous races, the first musical instruments were, without doubt, percussive—sticks, calabashes, tom-toms—and were used simply to mark the time of the dance ; and in this constant repetition of the same sound, we see music in...1864, Herbert Spencer, “Progress: Its Law and Cause”, in Illustrations of Universal Progress: A Series of Discussions, New York: D. Appleton and Company, page 26
  2. Produced by striking organs together, for example, smacking the lips or gnashing the teeth.
    • Two additional, and much rarer, percussive articulations are represented by symbols in the extIPA chart. Their exclusion from the main IPA chart is an indication that they do not seem to occur as typical forms of adult speech in any part of the world, although they may have some communicative...2013, Nigel Hewlett, Janet Mackenzie Beck, An Introduction to the Science of Phonetics, Routledge, →ISBN

Noun

percussive (plural percussives)

  1. A percussive phone.
    • Percussives are articulations where two rigid or semirigid articulators are struck against each other to produce a short, sharp sound.2014, Martin J. Ball, Nicole Muller, Phonetics for Communication Disorders, Psychology Press, →ISBN

Examples of percussive in a sentence

  • Mon the Biff!" – come on the Biffy Clyro – with a startling and percussive unity.
  • If percussive maintenance and other home remedies have failed, you should try running a general diagnostic utility.
  • “Electric Kulintang,” her percussive collaboration with Mr.

All 11 example sentences with percussive

Forms of percussive

Adjective
comparativemore percussive
superlativemost percussive
Noun
pluralpercussives

Origin of percussive

From percuss + -ive.

Words formed from percussive

Questions about percussive

What does percussive mean?
Percussive means characterized by percussion; caused by or related to the action of striking or pounding something.
What part of speech is percussive?
Percussive can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce percussive?
Percussive is pronounced /pəˈkʌsɪv/ (UK).

Words near percussive in the dictionary

  1. percussional
  2. percussionally
  3. percussionist
  4. percussionists
  5. percussions
  6. percussive
  7. percussive maintenance
  8. percussively
  9. percussiveness
  10. percussives
  11. percussor

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: percussive (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-percussive.wav.

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