preceptive
preceptive adjective: of, pertaining to, or based on precepts.
Adjective
preceptive (comparative more preceptive, superlative most preceptive)
- Of, pertaining to, or based on precepts
- If it was necessary, that Christ as our surety should suffer the penalty of the law in our stead, because we have sinned; then it was also necessary that as our Surety, he should yield obedience to the preceptive part of the law also;1677, John Owen, The Doctrine of Justification by Faith
- instructive; didactic
- It is altogether preceptive, barely containing the rules, without illustration from example. It is a system of rhetoric in the abstract.1810, John Quincy Adams, Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory
Forms of preceptive
| comparative | more preceptive |
|---|---|
| superlative | most preceptive |
Origin of preceptive
From precept + -ive.
Words formed from preceptive
Questions about preceptive
- What does preceptive mean?
- Preceptive means of, pertaining to, or based on precepts.
- What part of speech is preceptive?
- Preceptive is an adjective.
Words near preceptive in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: preceptive (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: “preceptive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/preceptive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.