Persistive

//pə(ɹ)ˈsɪstɪv// adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    persistent obsolete

    "Do you with cheekes abash'd, behold our workes, And thinke them shame, which are (indeed) nought else But the protractiue trials of great Ioue, To finde persistiue constancie in men?"

  2. 2
    Indicating a situation that was the case at one time (usually past) and continues to a later time (usually time of speaking).

    "The present paper looks at so-called persistive markers (denoting something like “still going on”) in the sub-Saharan Bantu languages, one of the major subgroups of the Niger-Congo language phylum."

Example

More examples

"Do you with cheekes abash'd, behold our workes, And thinke them shame, which are (indeed) nought else But the protractiue trials of great Ioue, To finde persistiue constancie in men?"

Etymology

From persist + -ive.

Related phrases

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