Agentic
adj ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 That behaves like an agent: able to express or expressing agency or control on one's own behalf or on the behalf of another.
"From the perspective of the previous chapter, to change from a patient to an agent is to adopt or elaborate an agentic plot that the person lives (Howard 1989)."
- 2 That obeys authority (introduced in Milgram's theory). broadly
"Most individuals can be easily triggered to enter, and be comfortable in the agentic state."
- 3 Having to do with performance, or achieving status.
"If helping is a variation on the more general agentic theme of self-assertion and display, one might expect that power motivation would predict other forms of agentic striving in friendship experiences."
- 4 Having agency; able to make independent decisions in pursuit of a goal.
"Billy was agentic in his learning and didn't only do what the teacher told him."
Example
More examples"From the perspective of the previous chapter, to change from a patient to an agent is to adopt or elaborate an agentic plot that the person lives (Howard 1989)."
Etymology
From agent + -ic.
Related phrases
More for "agentic"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.