Word.ws English Dictionary

preventives

preventives is the plural of preventive.

Meaning of preventive

Noun

preventive (plural preventives)

  1. (dated) A thing that prevents, hinders, or acts as an obstacle to.
    • Dogs should be warmly but airily housed; heartily, but not heatingly, fed — old Indian meal, mixed with oatmeal, suppawn, is the best general food, with a small quantity of salt, which is a preventive against worms […]1856, Henry William Herbert, The Complete Manual for Young Sportsmen
  2. (dated) A thing that slows the development of an illness.
    • A good preventive against heart disease is a healthy lifestyle.
  3. A contraceptive, especially a condom.

See all 7 meanings of preventive

Questions about preventives

What is preventives the plural of?
Preventives is the plural of preventive.

Words near preventives in the dictionary

  1. preventive services
  2. preventive war
  3. preventive wars
  4. preventively
  5. preventiveness
  6. preventives
  7. preventivist
  8. preventivists
  9. preventor
  10. preventoria
  11. preventorial

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: preventives (page history and authors); preventive (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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