Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Serving to explain; explanatory.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Serving to explicate, or unfold or explain; tending to make clear or intelligible; explanatory. Also explicatory.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Serving to unfold or explain; tending to lay open to the understanding; explanatory.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Explanatory; serving to explain logically or in detail.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin explico ("to unfold, open out")

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Examples

  • The former may be called explicative, the latter augmentative judgements; because the former add in the predicate nothing to the conception of the subject, but only analyse it into its constituent conceptions, which were thought already in the subject, although in a confused manner; the latter add to our conceptions of the subject a predicate which was not contained in it, and which no analysis could ever have discovered therein.

    The Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant 1764

  • He writes lyrics that will reward the kind of explicative analysis usually accorded to the finest of poets.

    All articles at Blogcritics 2010

  • Mr. Bengtson has written two books pairing photographic studies with explicative prose on the locations depicted in the films of Chaplin and Keaton .

    Fast Times With Harold Lloyd Bruce Bennett 2011

  • I doubt Part 2 in this series is going to be very explicative about hawks.

    Knowing a hawk from a handsaw, pt 1 2008

  • The four tug at slim underwear and an "X" appears on each's mouth as an explicative is bleeped out.

    Calvin Klein Marks Its Spot: China 2010

  • The four tug at slim underwear and an "X" appears on each's mouth as an explicative is bleeped out.

    Calvin Klein Marks Its Spot: China 2010

  • The four tug at slim underwear and an "X" appears on each's mouth as an explicative is bleeped out.

    Calvin Klein Marks Its Spot: China 2010

  • The four tug at slim underwear and an "X" appears on each's mouth as an explicative is bleeped out.

    Calvin Klein Marks Its Spot: China 2010

  • The four tug at slim underwear and an "X" appears on each's mouth as an explicative is bleeped out.

    Calvin Klein Marks Its Spot: China 2010

  • Issa has been a (insert the explicative of your choice) since his car theif and fraud days ...

    Issa Funding GOP's California Electoral Vote Initiative 2009

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