Distinctive
adj, noun ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A distinctive thing: a quality or property permitting distinguishing; a characteristic.
"...the red umbrella, the distinctive of royalty here..."
- 2 A distinctive accent. Hebrew
"A distinctive of less power than Zakeph is Ṭiphḥâ."
- 3 A distinctive belief, tenet, or dogma of a denomination or sect.
"Mennonites could go forth somewhat detached from the chauvinism of Western culture—but not so from the Mennonite distinctives."
- 1 Distinguishing, used to or enabling the distinguishing of some thing.
"a product in distinctive packaging"
- 2 Discriminating, discerning, having the ability to distinguish between things. rare
"[…]more judicious and distinctive heads..."
- 3 Characteristic, typical.
"his distinctive bass voice"
- 4 Distinguished, being distinct in character or position. rare
"The refugees... at length ceased to exist as a distinctive body among the people."
- 5 Used to separate clauses in place of stops. Hebrew
"These are the main distinctive accents, and by stopping at them... the reader will do justice to the sense."
Show 1 more definition
- 6 Distinguishing a particular sense of word.
"Normally we symbolize only phonemes (distinctive features) so far as we can determine them."
- 1 of a feature that helps to distinguish a person or thing wordnet
- 2 capable of being classified wordnet
Example
More examples"Japan has many distinctive traits."
Etymology
From Latin distinctus, perfect passive participle of distinguere (“to push apart, to divide”), + -ive (forming adjectives signifying relation or tendency to). Cognate with French distinctif and Medieval Latin distinctivus.