Postformative
adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A formative element at the end.
- 1 Forming or affecting something that comes before. not-comparable
"The phenomenon of Berber verbs which are marked for person with both a preformative and a postformative affix […] finds a formally exact pendant in Canaanite, where there is one occurrence of the phenomenon in the Bible (Is 63:3 [אגאלתי]), but c. 20 occurrences in the Amarna tablets."
- 2 Occurring after the formation (chiefly written post-formative, said in Islamic studies of the period following the Golden Age of Islam 786–861 CE). not-comparable
"It seems that Western observers of the Near East—and, in addition, a large percentage of the intellectuals of the Islamic world—can hardly imagine a society in which a struggle for truth does not continuously rage. But such a society seems to have been the case in large parts of the Islamic world of the postformative era. […]"
Example
More examples"The phenomenon of Berber verbs which are marked for person with both a preformative and a postformative affix […] finds a formally exact pendant in Canaanite, where there is one occurrence of the phenomenon in the Bible (Is 63:3 [אגאלתי]), but c. 20 occurrences in the Amarna tablets."
Etymology
From post- (prefix meaning ‘after’) + formative, modelled after preformative.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.