restrictive
/ɹɪˈstɹɪktɪv/
restrictive adjective: confining, limiting, containing within defined bounds.
Adjective
restrictive (comparative more restrictive, superlative most restrictive)
- Confining, limiting, containing within defined bounds.
- The help tended to be officious, the rules, if heeded, restrictive, and the management meddlesome.1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Soldier in White”, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 168
- The pinnacle of the effort to fix restrictive meanings to a set of terminology can be found in two papers in American Speech by Feinsilver (1979, 1980).2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 7
- limiting free and easy bodily movement.
- Some of them [teenagers] who will become lesbians clearly are being hit with the same kind of garbage which we got hit with in the fifties. There's been a real resurgence of that in terms of values and double standards and music. The clothes again — we're back to high heels and restrictive little...1980 December 6, Cindy Rizzo, Nancy Toder, “Jewish, Lesbian, Feminist, Psychologist, Author—All of the above and more”, in Gay Community News, volume 8, number 20, page 8
Noun
restrictive (plural restrictives)
- A clause that narrows the meaning of a noun or noun phrase.
- […] a couple of further differences between restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses: (1) in contrast with restrictives, the wh-phrase in non-restrictives cannot be ellipted; […]2013, Noel Burton-Roberts, Analysing Sentences, page 210
restrictive meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
restrictive in Hindi
- confining; limiting
- प्रतिबंधात्मक pratibandhātmak
restrictive in Tamil
- குறை அளவு
restrictive in Marathi
- प्रतिबंधात्मक, निर्बंधात्मक
restrictive in Urdu
- confining; limiting
- مؤکد
More languagesFewer languages
- restrictive in Gujarati
- પ્રતિબંધાત્મક
- restrictive in Odia
- ପ୍ରତିବନ୍ଧାତ୍ମକ
- restrictive in Sanskrit
- अवधारण avadhāraṇa
- restrictive in Nepali
- प्रतिबन्धात्मक
- restrictive in Arabic
- تَقْيِيدِيّ taqyīdiyy
- restrictive in Malay
- ketat
- restrictive in Indonesian
- ketat
- restrictive in Persian
- محدود mahdud
- restrictive in Thai
- จำกัด jam-gàt
- restrictive in Vietnamese
- hạn chế
Examples of restrictive in a sentence
- But RDG is taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut and punishing many millions of honest passengers by making tickets more restrictive.2026 March 18, Philip Haigh, “Tickets please: 2p per scan to offset fraudulent refunds?”, in RAIL, number 1057, page 48:
- The clothes again — we're back to high heels and restrictive little femmy outfits.1980 December 6, Cindy Rizzo, Nancy Toder, “Jewish, Lesbian, Feminist, Psychologist, Author—All of the above and more”, in Gay Community...
Forms of restrictive
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more restrictive |
| superlative | most restrictive |
| Noun | |
| plural | restrictives |
Origin of restrictive
From Middle French restrictif. Morphologically restrict + -ive.
Words formed from restrictive
Phrases with restrictive
Words that rhyme with restrictive
Questions about restrictive
- What does restrictive mean?
- Restrictive means confining, limiting, containing within defined bounds.
- What is restrictive in Hindi?
- Restrictive in Hindi is प्रतिबंधात्मक (pratibandhātmak). See Restrictive meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use restrictive in a sentence?
- But RDG is taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut and punishing many millions of honest passengers by making tickets more restrictive.
- What part of speech is restrictive?
- Restrictive can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce restrictive?
- Restrictive is pronounced /ɹɪˈstɹɪktɪv/.
Words near restrictive in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: restrictive (page history and authors); restrictive (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); restrictive (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); restrictive (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); restrictive (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); अवधारण (Sanskrit) (page history and authors); restrictive (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-restrictive.wav.
Cite this entry: “restrictive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/restrictive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.