Definitions

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

  • adjective Synthetic; compounded.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Having the power of compounding or composing; proceeding by composition; synthetic.

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

  • adjective rare Having the quality of entering into composition; compounded.

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

  • adjective Having the quality of entering into composition; compounded.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin compositivus, from com- ("together") + positus ("placed").

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Examples

  • Grosseteste's method is primarily dialectical; its aim is the discovery of a definition, a generalized verbal characterization, and it is perhaps not surprising that he discusses composition before taking up resolution, for in certain sciences (notably mathematics) the syn - thetic or compositive method is all that seems to be needed in most cases.

    Dictionary of the History of Ideas HENRY GUERLAC 1968

  • To dis - cover the causes, one must first proceed a posteriori, inferring causes from effects, i.e., using first the method of resolution or analysis; then the demonstrative or compositive method can be used to develop the conse - quences.

    Dictionary of the History of Ideas HENRY GUERLAC 1968

  • He envisaged the use of the resoluto-compositive method of Galileo to erect

    BEHAVIORISM R. S. PETERS 1968

  • He thought that Copernicus and Galileo had revealed the method for investigating the natural world, that Harvey had applied this to the study of the body, and that he, Hobbes, was showing how this method, the resoluto-compositive method of Galileo, could be applied to psychology and politics.

    BEHAVIORISM R. S. PETERS 1968

  • Teutonic, Greek, and Latin elements, while the German tongue unfolds all the varieties of the same idea by a series of compositive words founded upon one Gothic root.

    Handbook of Universal Literature From the Best and Latest Authorities Anne C. Lynch Botta 1853

  • NYC's Agora gallery is showing the marvellous junk-tech sculptures of Italy's Franco Recchia: he approaches each subject with that sense of innocent amazement, instinctively following a compositive and rigorous logic until each piece is laid in its correct place.

    Boing Boing Cory Doctorow 2010

  • As the Logistics extended services compositive merchant in the east of China, the enterprise provides a variety of services, such as container transport agency, container stack and warehouse logistics and the integrated value-added service.

    Gaea Times (by Simple Thoughts) Breaking News and incisive views 24/7 2009

  • “resolutive-compositive” method elaborated in the opening sections of the Leviathan (Lukes 1968, 119).

    Methodological Individualism Heath, Joseph 2009

  • I am sorry to say that a pestilent stricture of the imagination, or rather, of the compositive faculty so constrains me that I have not yet finished the poem I have been writing with regard to the discovery and service of this beast. "

    On Nothing and Kindred Subjects Hilaire Belloc 1911

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