Additive

//ˈæd.ɪ.tɪv// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A substance added to another substance or product to produce specific properties in the combined substance.

    "Oil may be used as an additive in gasoline to improve the lubrication of a small engine."

  2. 2
    something added to enhance food or gasoline or paint or medicine wordnet
  3. 3
    A word or phrase that adds something, such as also, even, or nor.
Adjective
  1. 1
    Pertaining to addition; that can be, or has been, added.
  2. 2
    That is distributive over addition. usually

    "Matrix multiplication is additive, in that M#92;vecv#43;M#92;vecw#61;M(#92;vecv#43;#92;vecw)."

  3. 3
    Whose operator is identified as addition.

    "It is natural to look at a finite cyclic group as an additive group."

  4. 4
    Pertaining to chemical addition.
  5. 5
    Of or pertaining to genes (or the interaction etc. of such genes) which govern the same trait and whose effects work together on the phenotype.
Adjective
  1. 1
    characterized or produced by addition wordnet
  2. 2
    designating or involving an equation whose terms are of the first degree wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
additionalcumulativesummationalaccessionaccessoryaccompaniment

Example

More examples

"Is that in the additive or subtractive color model?"

Etymology

From Late Latin additivus, from the participial stem of Latin addere (“to add”).

Related phrases

additive categoryadditive coloradditive combinatoricsadditive functionadditive groupadditive identityadditive inverseadditive manufacturingadditive number theoryadditive operationadditive pluralcountably additive

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.