Destructive

adj

adj ·3 syllables ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective

1
Causing destruction; damaging.
"The pastures are filled with gay political drop-outs, persons of reasonable intent who found the scene personally destructive."
2
Causing breakdown or disassembly.
"Catabolism is a destructive metabolism that involves the breakdown of molecules and release of energy."
3
Lossy; causing irreversible change.
"Blurring an image is a destructive operation, but rotating an image is not."

Adjective

1
causing destruction or much damage wordnet

Synonyms

calamitous cataclysmal catastrophic damaging devastating disastrous

Antonyms

constructive non-destructive nondestructive productive

Example

"Suspicion is destructive of friendship."

Etymology

From Middle French destructif, from Latin destructivus, from past participle of destruere (“to tear down, destroy”) + -ivus.

Related phrases

destructive backspace destructive criticism destructive distillation destructive interference destructive read destructive sorites non-destructive read self-destructive

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