Exploitative
adj ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 In the nature of exploitation; acting to exploit someone or something
"We are protesting the company's exploitative policies."
- 2 Of or relating to exploitation. broadly
"Carey McWilliams offers an exploitative theory to explain anti-Semitism.¹⁸ Social exclusion of Jews, he points out, commenced in the 1870’s just when huge fortunes were being made in industry and in railroading."
- 3 Wherein one organism reduces a resource to the point of affecting other organisms.
"The ways in which tadpoles inhibit each other’s growth have been of particular interest since Richards (1958) and Rose (1960) first indicated that interference as well as exploitative mechanisms may be involved."
- 1 tending to exploit or make use of wordnet
Example
More examples"Lopez said people do not realize what is happening in their own backyard. She calls the exploitative work that robs children of their childhood unacceptable and said it must stop. She said children are the future and if people fail to protect the world's children, then there is little hope for the future."
Etymology
From exploit + -ative. Compare exploitive.
More for "exploitative"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.