formative

Meanings

1. Capable of forming something.
2. Capable of producing new tissue.
3. Pertaining to the formation of words; specifically, of an affix: forming words through inflection.
4. Of or pertaining to the formation and subsequent growth of something.
5. Of a form of assessment: used to guide learning rather than to quantify educational outcomes.

1. A thing which causes formation to occur.
2. A language unit, typically a morph, that has a morphological function (that is, forming a word from a root or another word).
3. Synonym of derivative (“a word that derives from another one”).

Etymology

From Middle English formatyve, formatif (“having the ability to form”), from Old French formatif, formative (modern French formatif), from Medieval Latin formātīvus, from Latin fōrmātus + -īvus (suffix forming adjectives with the sense ‘doing’ or ‘related to doing’). Fōrmātus is the perfect passive participle of fōrmō (“to form, to shape”), from fōrma (“a form, shape”); further etymology uncertain, possibly related to Ancient Greek μορφή (morphḗ, “a form, shape”) (see further at that entry). By surface analysis, form + -ative.

Translations