Fientive
adj ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 designating a durative and dynamic action performed by the subject not-comparable
"This underlines again that a contrast of nominality versus verbality conveys a stative versus fientive purport."
- 2 designating entering into a state as opposed to being in a state not-comparable
"The basic idea is that what previous scholarship categorised as a stative, viz. the various forms going back to a derivation with a long ē, is in fact a fientive, i.e. it designates the becoming and not the being."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"This underlines again that a contrast of nominality versus verbality conveys a stative versus fientive purport."
Etymology
From Latin fīēns (“becoming; happening”, present active participle of fīō (“to become; to happen”)), on the pattern of words such as stative, durative, iterative, causative etc.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.