Word.ws English Dictionary

performatively

performatively adverb: in a performative manner.

Adverb

performatively (not comparable)

  1. In a performative manner.
    • He is the God of all comfort, First, Purposely; Second, Provisionally; Third, Prescriptively and performatively.1866, George Wyard, Devout and Explanatory Reflections on Important Portions of God's Word, page 398
    • Most of them can also be used performatively, however, i.e. to make explicit what kind of speech act it is the speaker performs (not all illocutionary verbs can be so used however: cf e.g. boast, threaten).1980, Magnus Ljung, Reflections on the English Progressive

Origin of performatively

From performative + -ly.

Questions about performatively

What does performatively mean?
Performatively means in a performative manner.
What part of speech is performatively?
Performatively is an adverb.

Words near performatively in the dictionary

  1. performatism
  2. performative
  3. performative authoritarianism
  4. performative utterance
  5. performative utterances
  6. performatively
  7. performativeness
  8. performatives
  9. performativism
  10. performativities
  11. performativity

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: performatively (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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