Definitions

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

  • adjective Serving to connect coordinate words or clauses.
  • adjective Serving as a copula.
  • adjective Of or relating to copulation.
  • noun A copulative word or group of words.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Uniting or coupling; serving to unite or couple.
  • Relating or pertaining to copulation.
  • noun A copulative conjunction. Connection.
  • noun One who copulates.

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

  • adjective Serving to couple, unite, or connect.
  • noun obsolete Connection.
  • noun (Gram.) A copulative conjunction.

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

  • adjective Of or pertaining to copulation
  • adjective grammar that acts as a copula
  • adjective grammar that connects the subject of a clause with its complement
  • noun obsolete connection
  • noun grammar A copulative conjunction.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an equating verb (such as `be' or `become') that links the subject with the complement of a sentence
  • adjective syntactically connecting sentences or elements of a sentence

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Some suggestive verbs became known as copulative; nouns and pronouns might be epicene; constructions might be pregnant.

    VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol III No 2 1976

  • Trachimday is the only time all year when the tiny village of Trachimbrod can be seen from space, when enough copulative voltage is generated to sex the

    A Conversation with Jonathan Safran Foer about Everything Is Illuminated 2010

  • He has the hook-singing prowess of Nate Dogg, a Southern drawl perfect for slowly cruising the strip with the top down and a talent for drawing humor from pharmacological, scatological and copulative raps.

    Nightlife Agenda: Paul Oakenfold, Michael Mayer and outdoor parties 2010

  • As for your 6 propositions, no real argument here except to note that prop.5 is still of the form 'God is x', only using the copulative grammatically as a descriptor.

    Theism defended 2009

  • How many of you youngsters ever heard of copulative verbs?

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Trying Too Hard? [UPDATE: Or Maybe Just Making a One-Off Mistake] 2009

  • It is a puerile illusion, hardly worthy of a fourteen-year-old mind, yet it persists among grown men even as they meet women more avidly copulative than they.

    'Homer & Langley' 2009

  • I've been reading Elizabeth Grosz on sensation and futurity: "There is an involuted and oblique relation between the energies of sexual selection...the attraction to and possible attainment of sexual (though not necessarily copulative) partners—human and otherwise—and the forces and energies of artistic production and consumption" (from *Chaos, Territory, Art*).

    Trauma Dodie Bellamy 2008

  • I've been reading Elizabeth Grosz on sensation and futurity: "There is an involuted and oblique relation between the energies of sexual selection...the attraction to and possible attainment of sexual (though not necessarily copulative) partners—human and otherwise—and the forces and energies of artistic production and consumption" (from *Chaos, Territory, Art*).

    Archive 2008-09-01 Dodie Bellamy 2008

  • In contrast, C4M advocates tend to think that the +C4W-C4M movement is motivated by a desire - perhaps a subconscious desire - to deny men any post-copulative reproductive choice - essentially to punish them for getting women pregnant.

    Do they really believe that abortion is murder? 2006

  • By figuring her visual perception of beauty in terms of copulative touch, Oothoon articulates an imaginative alternative to the oppositional subject/object dynamic so often associated with the economy of the gaze.

    Gender, Environment, and Imperialism in William Blake's _Visions of the Daughters of Albion_ 2001

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