adjectivaladj.n.

1647 F. Lodowyck Common Writing 13 We will..proceed to the Nounes Appellative Adjective, which are Active, Passive, Denominative..Commonly called Participles... These three sorts, are to have their adjectivall distinctions.

1788 J. Trusler Habitable World Described II. 55 They give their children an accidental and commonly an adjectival name.

1797 W. Taylor in Monthly Rev. 24 558 All the regular inflexions which bestow on it [sc. a noun] a privative, an adjectival, or a verbal form.

1860 G. P. Marsh Lect. Eng. Lang. vi. 135 Our adjectival ending in -ble.

1897 Lancet 20 Feb. 516/2 If the terms are to be used at all they should be employed in the adjectival form.

1915 E. C. Woolley Written Eng. xxxvii. 248 An adjectival clause may modify an object or a predicate substantive.

1977 F. Raphael Cracks in Ice (1979) 333 Satura..can also be applied, since it was originally adjectival, to a pregnant woman and to a sausage.

2006 W. Safire in N.Y. Times Mag. 10 Sept. 18/1 Pluto is now officially downgraded to a new category called dwarf planet, and all textbooks..are ordered to refer to it with that adjectival derogation.

1899 Nation 19 Oct. 298/1 A fondness for studied and highly adjectival description is a characteristic which she constantly displays.

1928 Sat. Rev. 28 July 127/1 The style is too adjectival.

1965 New Statesman 22 Oct. 604/3 The intensely adjectival nature of her writing... Miss Murdoch is the most adjectival novelist ever.

2007 C. Duggan Force of Destiny vii. 155 In a thousand pages of dense adjectival prose Gioberti ranged over centuries of cultural and religious life in Italy.

1907 R. Marsh Girl & Miracle xxxix. 314 In reply, sir, he called me an adjectival liar; and he kept on adjectiving Mr. Hankey as he helped him up the stairs.

1932 D. L. Sayers Have his Carcase viii. 92 The decease of a damned dago, hr'rm, in an adjectival four-by-three watering-place like Wilvercombe.

1959 G. Mitchell Man who grew Tomatoes xiii. 167 Beresford told him to take his adjectival charity elsewhere.

2006 Toronto Star (Nexis) 11 July b2 She shot me a look as if to say, ‘Are you out of your adjectival mind?’

1866 J. M. D. Meiklejohn Easy Eng. Gram. IV. vii. v. 10 We can add on to the subject as many Adjectivals as we please.

1870 J. H. Trumbull Indian Geogr. Names 39 The adjectivals employed in the composition of Algonkin names are very numerous.

1882 W. G. Wrightson Exam. Functional Elem. Eng. Sentence 86 An adjectival is capable of expressing several different shades of meaning.

1961 Amer. Speech 36 163 Roughly speaking, the prenominal adjectivals will be only single, simplex (descriptive) adjectives.

2003 R. Pustet Copulas iii. 86 Prototypical adjectivals such as good or red..are indeterminate with respect to time-stability.