Formative

Quick meaning: Formative is an adjective meaning Capable of forming something.

Meaning

Capable of forming something.

More Meanings

1. Of or pertaining to the formation and subsequent growth of something.
2. (education) Of a form of assessment: used to guide learning rather than to quantify educational outcomes.
3. A thing which causes formation to occur.
4. A language unit, typically a morph, that has a morphological function (that is, forming a word from a root or another word).
5. Synonym of derivative (“a word that derives from another one”).

Example Sentences

My formative years were spent in an inner city.

Hybrids, […] have their reproductive organs functionally impotent, as may be clearly seen in the state of the male element in both plants and animals; though the formative organs themselves are perfect in structure, as far as the microscope reveals.

[I]ts thought, that, in the Seed are alvvaies potentially ſeuerall indiuiduating Qualities deriu'd from diuers of the neere Anceſtors, vvhich by the formatiue povver of the Parents may be expreſt in the Children, vvith reſpectiue habitude to either Sex; […]

[T]his museum of the state of flux [Newmarket, Suffolk] has a climate unrivalled for the production of the British temperament. Not without a due proportion of that essential formative of character, east wind, it has at once the hottest sun, the coldest blizzards, the wettest rain, of any place of its size in 'the three kingdoms.'

Word Forms

• formatives

Synonyms for formative

Depending on context, synonyms include creant, poietic, formans, formant, descendant, reflex.

Antonyms for formative

Common opposites include unformative.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include shaping, inchoative, immature, constructive, young, formation.

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