Definitions

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

  • adjective Causing or tending to cause sneezing.
  • noun A sternutatory substance, such as pepper.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Causing or tending to cause sneezing.
  • noun Anything which causes sneezing, as snuff; an errhine.

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

  • adjective Sternutative.

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

  • adjective That causes or induces sneezing; sternutative.
  • noun Any substance that causes sneezing; a sternutator

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

  • noun a chemical substance that causes sneezing and coughing and crying
  • adjective tending to cause sneezing
  • adjective causing sneezing

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin sternūtātōrius, from sternuō ("sneeze").

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Examples

  • To procure the expulsion of the secundines, apply a sternutatory, and shut the nostrils and mouth.

    Aphorisms 2007

  • He had seen me in a tandem, and at that moment was seized with a violent fit of sneezing — (sternutatory paroxysm he called it) — at the conclusion of which I was a mile down the Woodstock Road.

    The Fitz-Boodle Papers 2006

  • Somebody on this planet had a gas which was a regurgi-tant, a sternutatory, and a vesicant all in one.

    Cities In Flight Blish, James 1957

  • Now the first account is suspiciously like a book-story of Oriental hashish-taking. -- the second has no implication of smoking at all, while the third describes nothing but the process of taking a sternutatory.

    The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 Various

  • She is a regular old tub of a boat; the cabins are profitably fitted with three beds in each, one above the other; the consequence is, that if you wish to sneeze at night, you must turn on your side, or you'll break your nose against the bed above you in the little jerk that usually accompanies the sternutatory process.

    Lands of the Slave and the Free Cuba, the United States, and Canada Henry A. Murray

  • Pizarro found chewers in Peru, but it was in the country discovered by Cabral that the great sternutatory was originally found.

    Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce E. R. Billings

  • Stewart in his admirable paper on snuff gives much useful information in regard to the universal custom of using it as well as its origin and distinguished uses of the great sternutatory.

    Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce E. R. Billings

  • The chief sternutatory compound, diphenylchlorarsine, although not volatile, could also be used in this way, for, being a solid and in a very finely pulverised state, its presence on the ground was not a distinct danger, and it invited chemical decomposition.

    The riddle of the Rhine, chemical strategy in peace and war ... 1921

  • They were mostly arsenic compounds and were not only sternutatory but also toxic, producing the after effects of arsenic poisoning.

    The riddle of the Rhine, chemical strategy in peace and war ... 1921

  • By altering the construction of the 10.5 c.m. universal shell for light field howitzers, the ` N. i 'projectile was created in the form of 10.5 c.m. shrapnel, the bullets of which were embedded in a sternutatory powder (double salts of dianisidine) well stamped down, instead of an explosive.

    The riddle of the Rhine, chemical strategy in peace and war ... 1921

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