Proactive

//pɹoʊˈæk.tɪv// adj

adj ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Acting in advance to deal with an expected change or difficulty.

    "We can deal with each problem as it pops up, or we can take a proactive stance and try to prevent future problems."

Adjective
  1. 1
    (of a policy or person or action) controlling a situation by causing something to happen rather than waiting to respond to it after it happens wordnet
  2. 2
    descriptive of any event or stimulus or process that has an effect on events or stimuli or processes that occur subsequently wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
activeanticipatoryanticipatoryforward lookingforward-looking

Example

More examples

"School busing and taking a proactive stance against discrimination were hotly debated topics."

Etymology

From pro- + active; originally coined 1933 by Paul Whiteley and Gerald Blankfort in a psychology paper, used in technical sense. Used in a popular context and sense (courage, perseverance) in 1946 book Man’s Search for Meaning by neuropsychiatrist Viktor Emil Frankl, in the context of dealing with the Holocaust, as contrast with reactive.

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