separative — English Dictionary

Adjective

1. Serving to separate.

   Examples

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   […] that much more full and eminent Experiment of the Separative Virtue of extream Cold, that was made, against their Wills, by the […] Dutch men that Winter’d in Nova Zembla;

   We have hitherto only observed the colouring substance itself, we ought now to consider the preparation of the ground which receives it: to inquire how it comes that every object hath this separative power over the particles of light; how it imbibes one colour, while it copiously reflects another?

   Jews christianizing—Christians judaizing—puzzle me. I like fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is a more confounding piece of anomaly than a wet Quaker. The spirit of the synagogue is essentially separative.

   He concluded very naturally that the boy had come to some crisis in his unfortunate entanglement with Madeleine Philips, and he was flattered by the trustfulness that brought the matter to him. He resolved to be delicate but wily, honourable, strictly honourable, but steadily, patiently separative.

2. Tending to keep oneself separate from others.

   Usage

   • Rare

   Examples

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   Pye had never forgotten or forgiven the ingenious fraud. It had taught him secretiveness, made him even more lone and separative. He had withdrawn from the world of men, academic and otherwise.

   I was working hard, and living a rather separative existence, without realizing at the time what this aloofness meant for me.

Noun

1. Something that serves to separate.

   Examples

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   1853, A. F. Lendy, The Principles of War, London: Parker, Furnivall, and Parker, “Strategy,” Chapter 4, p. 117, […] as for the distance between [the roads], it varies according to the strength of the army and the nature of the ground, the essential point being not to leave between them obstacles acting as separatives, such as rivers, &c.

   He […] independently identified the oblique wedge as a separative of words [in cuneiform writing] […]

Adjective

1. (used of an accent in Hebrew orthography) indicating that the word marked is separated to a greater or lesser degree rhythmically and grammatically from the word that follows it

2. serving to separate or divide into parts

   Synonyms

   partitive

   Examples

   partitive tendencies in education

   the uniting influence was stronger than the separative

3. (of a word) referring singly and without exception to the members of a group

   Examples

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   whereas ‘each’, ‘every’, ‘either’, ‘neither’, and ‘none’ are distributive or referring to a single member of a group, ‘which’ in ‘which of the men’ is separative