receptive
Meanings
- Capable of receiving something.
- Ready to receive something, especially new concepts or ideas.
- Of a female flower or gynoecium: ready for reproduction; fertile.
- Of, affecting, or pertaining to the understanding of language rather than its expression.
- Of a female animal (especially a mammal): prepared to mate; in heat, in oestrus.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Italic *wre- Latin re- Proto-Indo-European *kap- Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *kapyéti Proto-Italic *kapjō Old Latin kapiō Latin capiō Latin recipiō Latin receptus Proto-Indo-European *-wós Proto-Indo-European *-iHwósder. Latin -īvus Medieval Latin receptivusbor. Middle English receptive English receptive From Late Middle English receptive, receptyue (“capable of receiving something; acting as a receptacle”), borrowed from Medieval Latin receptivus (“capable of receiving something”), from Latin receptus (“retaken, having been retaken; received, having been received”) + -īvus (suffix added to the perfect passive participial stems of verbs, forming a deverbal adjective meaning ‘doing; related to doing’). Receptus is the perfect passive participle of recipiō (“to regain possession, take back; to recapture; to receive; to accept, undertake”), from re- (prefix meaning ‘back, backwards; again’) + capiō (“to capture, catch, take; to take hold, take possession; to take on; to contain, hold; to occupy; to possess; to receive, take in; to comprehend, understand; to captivate, charm”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kap- (“to hold; to seize”)).