Definitions

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

  • adjective Of or constituting a transitive verb that renders to a thing a certain character or status and that in English can take an objective complement modifying its direct object, such as make in That makes me angry, or elect in We elected him Treasurer.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Causative; effective; expressive of making or causing: in grammar said of a verb which takes, besides its object, a further adjunct expressing something predicated of that object: thus, they made him a ruler; to call a man a coward; to paint the house red.
  • noun In grammar, a factitive verb.

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

  • adjective Causing; causative.
  • adjective (Gram.) Pertaining to that relation which is proper when the act, as of a transitive verb, is not merely received by an object, but produces some change in the object, as when we say, He made the water wine.

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

  • adjective linguistics, of a verb Causative
  • adjective linguistics, rare, of a verb Factive.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[New Latin factitīvus, from Latin factitāre, to do, practice, frequentative of facere, to do; see dhē- in Indo-European roots.]

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word factitive.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.