mutativeadj.n.

1720 E. Ward Delights of Bottle ii. 25 Jove, therefore..gave to the Profession Of Vintners, the mutative Pow'r That Proteus had in Times of Yore.

1743 H. Fielding Misc. I. 273 We are forced to proceed..by the Metabolic or Mutative [method], not by the Schystic or Divisive.

1832 New-Eng. Mag. 2 290 But my present business is not to speak of the principles, modes, or mutative influence of general education.

1907 Athenæum 31 Aug. 242/3 Whilst wheat, oats, peas, and vetches are still..in a mutative state or period, barley is now in a period of stability.

1916 Genetics 1 606 The individual mutative tendencies of the different species of Drosphila.

1987 P. Lomas Limits of Interpretation ii. 21 Strachey refers to those interpretations that really change things as ‘mutative’.

1818 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. 3 533 He is neither so mutative and dissimilis sibi as Odoherty.

1866 Jrnl. Royal Asiatic Soc. 2 485 The verbal forms belonging to each conjugation may be divided into two great classes, which I call permansive and mutative. The former denotes continuance in the state which the verb signifies in that conjugation; the latter denotes change into that state.

1888 G. Bertin Abridged Gram. Lang. Cuneiform Inscr. 63 The mutative is used for the present and future.

1888 Athenæum 3 Nov. 585/1 To the indicative mood he gives a precative tense, to the imperative mood a mutative tense and to the subjective mood three tenses, aorist, mutative, and precative.

1973 Hiroshima Stud. Eng. Lang. & Lit. 19 101 The formation of the perfect form by be is exclusively restricted to some of the mutative verbs.