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privative adjective

privative adjective noun: an adjective used to show that a noun refers to something outside the category that the noun normally represents.

Noun

privative adjective (plural privative adjectives)

  1. An adjective used to show that a noun refers to something outside the category that the noun normally represents.
    • That's fake news.
    • Isn't that a toy sword?
  2. An adjective indicating that a noun lacks some other noun, or a quality of that noun; usually formed in English by the affixation of the suffix -less or suffixoid -free to the noun that is absent.
    • finger + -less → fingerless
    • hope + -less → hopeless

Antonyms of privative adjective

Forms of privative adjective

pluralprivative adjectives

Questions about privative adjective

What does privative adjective mean?
Privative adjective means an adjective used to show that a noun refers to something outside the category that the noun normally represents.
What part of speech is privative adjective?
Privative adjective is a noun.
What is the plural of privative adjective?
The plural of privative adjective is privative adjectives.

Words near privative adjective in the dictionary

  1. privatissima
  2. privatissimum
  3. privatissimums
  4. privative
  5. privative a
  6. privative adjective
  7. privative adjectives
  8. privative as
  9. privative case
  10. privative cases
  11. privatively

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: privative adjective (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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