Word.ws English Dictionary

persistive

/pə(ɹ)ˈsɪstɪv/

persistive adjective: persistent.

Adjective

persistive (comparative more persistive, superlative most persistive)

  1. (obsolete) persistent
    • Do you with cheekes abash'd, behold our workes,
      And thinke them shame, which are (indeed) nought else
      But the protractiue trials of great Ioue,
      To finde persistiue constancie in men?c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
    • It should further be observed, that this order of spasm is very persistive, sometimes continuing even after apparent death[…]1858, Alva Curtis, A Synopsis of Lectures on Medical Science
  2. Indicating a situation that was the case at one time (usually past) and continues to a later time (usually time of speaking).
    • The present paper looks at so-called persistive markers (denoting something like “still going on”) in the sub-Saharan Bantu languages, one of the major subgroups of the Niger-Congo language phylum.2008, Jouni Filip Maho, “Comparative TAM morphology in Niger-Congo”, in Folke Josephson, Ingmar Söhrman, editors, Interdependence of Diachronic and Synchronic Analyses
    • Persistive aspect is marked with a post-initial prefix shí-. Its high tone does not surface when combined with a construction that uses melodic tone 42022, Hilde Gunnink, A grammar of Fwe

Forms of persistive

comparativemore persistive
superlativemost persistive

Origin of persistive

From persist + -ive.

Words formed from persistive

Phrases with persistive

Questions about persistive

What does persistive mean?
Persistive means persistent.
What part of speech is persistive?
Persistive is an adjective.
How do you pronounce persistive?
Persistive is pronounced /pə(ɹ)ˈsɪstɪv/.

Words near persistive in the dictionary

  1. persisting
  2. persisting down
  3. persisting it down
  4. persistingly
  5. persistings
  6. persistive
  7. persistive vegetative state
  8. persistive vegetative states
  9. persistively
  10. persistiveness
  11. persistor

Source and license

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