Word.ws English Dictionary

singulative

singulative adjective: of or pertaining to a grammatical form or construction that expresses the individuation of a single referent from a mass noun.

Adjective

singulative (not comparable)

  1. Of or pertaining to a grammatical form or construction that expresses the individuation of a single referent from a mass noun.
    • English doesn't have a singulative number in general, but many uncountable nouns have usual singulative constructions.

Noun

singulative (plural singulatives)

  1. A singulative form or construction.
    • The singulative of "cattle" is "a head of cattle".
    • The singulative of "scissors" is "a pair of scissors".

Forms of singulative

pluralsingulatives

Origin of singulative

From French singulatif, from Latin singillatim (“singly", "one by one”), from singulus (“single", "separate”), from Proto-Italic *sem-g-lo-, a diminutive form derived from Proto-Indo-European *sem- (“one, together”).

Words formed from singulative

Questions about singulative

What does singulative mean?
Singulative means of or pertaining to a grammatical form or construction that expresses the individuation of a single referent from a mass noun.
What part of speech is singulative?
Singulative can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near singulative in the dictionary

  1. singulars
  2. singulatarian
  3. singulate
  4. singulation
  5. singulations
  6. singulative
  7. singulatively
  8. singulatives
  9. singuli in solidum
  10. singult
  11. singultient

Source and license

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