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Formative   /fˈɔrmətɪv/   Listen
adjective
Formative  adj.  
1.
Giving form; having the power of giving form; plastic; as, the formative arts. "The meanest plant can not be raised without seed, by any formative residing in the soil."
2.
(Gram.) Serving to form; derivative; not radical; as, a termination merely formative.
3.
(Biol.) Capable of growth and development; germinal; as, living or formative matter.


noun
Formative  n.  (Gram.)
(a)
That which serves merely to give form, and is no part of the radical, as the prefix or the termination of a word.
(b)
A word formed in accordance with some rule or usage, as from a root.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Formative" Quotes from Famous Books



... that he abandons or falls away from his moral ideal. The fact is quite contrary. He has so entirely established himself in that ideal that he no longer needs strivingly to assert it,—any more than Nature needs to pin upon oak-trees an affirmation that the idea of an oak dwells in her formative thought. Nature affirms the oak-idea by oaks; the consummate poet exhibits the same realism. He embodies. He lends a soul to forms. The real and ideal in Art are indeed often opposed to each other as contraries, but it is a false opposition. Let the artist represent reality, and all that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... the one end to which, in all living beings, the formative impulse is tending—the one scheme which the Archaeus of the old speculators strives to carry out, seems to be to mould the offspring into the likeness of the parent. It is the first great law of reproduction, that the offspring tends to resemble its parent or parents, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... are forced to turn our eyes and ears toward the direction of France. After Berlioz, a small fry, indeed, yet not without interest. The visit made by Claude Debussy to Russia in 1879 and during his formative period had consequences. He absorbed Moussorgsky, and built upon him, and he had Wagner at his finger-ends; like Charpentier he cannot keep Wagner out of his scores; the Bayreuth composer is the King Charles's head ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... unless we know that the figure can be cogitated under the conditions upon which all objects of experience rest. Now, the facts that space is a formal condition a priori of external experience, that the formative synthesis, by which we construct a triangle in imagination, is the very same as that we employ in the apprehension of a phenomenon for the purpose of making an empirical conception of it, are what alone connect the notion of the possibility of such ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... Psychological and Theological presuppositions of Christian Ethics. The second part will be devoted to man as moral subject, and will analyse the capacities of the soul which respond to the calls and claims of the new Life. The third Section will involve a consideration of the formative Principles of Character, the moulding of the soul, the Ideals, Motives and Forces by means of which the 'New Man' is 'recreated' and fashioned. Finally, under Conduct, the Virtues, Duties and Rights of man will be discussed; and the various spheres of service and institutions ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander


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