释义 |
formative, a. (n.)|ˈfɔːmətɪv| [a. OF. formatif, -ive (12th c.), as if ad. L. *formātīv-us, f. formāre to form: see -ive.] A. adj. 1. Having the faculty of forming or fashioning.
1490Caxton Eneydos xvi. 64 The arteres formatyue of speche were stopped wythin hym. 1614Selden Titles Hon. Pref. B iv, The formatiue power of the Parents. 1653Gauden Hierasp. 74 All other creatures rising up, as bubbles..so soon as the formative Word of God..fell..on the face of the great deep. 1824Examiner 451/2 Associations formative of lasting mind and character. 1859Darwin Orig. Spec. ix. (1873) 235 The formative organs themselves are perfect in structure. 2. Of or pertaining to formation or moulding.
1850J. Leitch Müller's Anc. Art §346. 417 The formative art. 1867J. Hogg Microsc. ii. i. 256 The formative processes of plant-life. 1875Whitney Life Lang. iv. 46 The early formative period of the Christian church. 3. Biol. and Path. (See quots.)
1877Bennett tr. Thomé's Bot. 41 A special tissue to which the names of formative or generating tissue and meristem have been given. 1894Duane Dict. Med., Formative, producing, or attended with the production of, new tissue. 4. Gram. Serving to form words: said chiefly of flexional and derivative suffixes or prefixes.
1711J. Greenwood Eng. Gram. 186 The formative Terminations. 1797W. Taylor in Monthly Mag. III. 338 The use of formative syllables. 1872Morris Eng. Accid. xviii. 211 To get at the root of a word we must remove all the formative elements. B. n. Gram. A formative element (see A. 4); also ‘a word formed in accordance with some rule or usage, as from a root’ (W.); (cf. derivative). Also gen., a formative agent.
1816Q. Rev. XV. 363 The element or formative, he seems to think, is employed to express the thing which modifies or connects itself with the idea suggested by the primitive. 1865J. Davies Temporal Augment 31 In this language prefixed particles or augments are used as verbal formatives. 1907Galsworthy Country House i. iv, That essential formative of character, east wind. 1953C. E. Bazell Linguistic Form i. 8 A unit of formation, commonly called (allo-) morph in America and morpheme in Europe (outside Copenhagen), and for which the present writer has proposed the term formative. 1965N. Chomsky Aspects of Theory of Syntax i. 3 The rules that specify the well-formed strings of minimal syntactically functioning units (formatives). 1965B. M. H. Strang Metaphors & Models 18 In the first stage a terminal string is generated by applying an ordered set of rules, the formula F, to some of a finite repertoire or set, σ, of formatives. Hence ˈformatively adv.; ˈformativeness.
1654tr. Behmen's Myst. Magnum xxxvii. 254 That which he introduced out of the deity into the humanity, that is, neither nature, nor creature, yet in our humanity formatively. 1849Fraser's Mag. XXXIX. 664 These are the pure links of nature, wholly innocent of human formativeness. 1874Pusey Lent. Serm. 318 ‘Having or holding’, S. Paul says, a ‘formativeness of godliness’ [2 Tim. iii. 5 µόρϕωσιν]. |