Emptive

adj

adj ·2 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Responding to or acting to counteract something when it happens (rather than beforehand). rare

    "Mike Malone recalls how the shaving of his fiancée's head was more of an “emptive” strike, since her hair was already on its way out."

Synonyms

All synonyms
reactivereactive

Example

More examples

"Mike Malone recalls how the shaving of his fiancée's head was more of an “emptive” strike, since her hair was already on its way out."

Etymology

Back-formation from preemptive.

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