Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Suffering from a morbid retention of fecal matter in the bowels, in a hard and dry state; having the excrements retained, or the motion of the bowels sluggish or suppressed; constipated.
- Figuratively, slow in action; especially, slow in giving forth ideas or opinions, etc.; uncommunicative; close; unproductive.
- Hard and dry; caked.
- Producing costiveness.
Wiktionary
- adj. constipated
- adj. miserly, parsimonious
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Retaining fecal matter in the bowels; having too slow a motion of the bowels; constipated.
- adj. Reserved; formal; close; cold.
- adj. Dry and hard; impermeable; unyielding.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. retarding evacuation of feces; binding; constipating.
Etymologies
- Middle English costif, from Old French costeve, past participle of costever, to constipate, from Latin cōnstīpāre; see constipate.
Examples
“And it can be costive, which is the last thing she needs with that wound in her stomach.”
A Funeral In Blue
“There is really no way of reading these often rather costive and puzzling early books without wondering on every page what, in them, is leading towards the immense achievements of those two big last novels.”
“Finally, Susan knelt, costive, to the scrub, arms bent out and away, and picked up her skein, gradually attaching it to her belt.”
365 tomorrows » 2010 » February : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day
“We become the social equivalent of banks that wont lend - we sit on our credit and credibility in a state of costive paranoia.”
The Huffington Post: Melik Kaylan: The Al Gore Smear: Gossip as an Instrument of Power
“Says another costive patron, pant-button about to pop from the accumulation of unevaluated by-products:”
“During the exacerbation most are restless, and most are costive constipated, hence the relentless laxatives.”
“The physician Hequet understood by slow bellies, that the Cretans were costive, which vitiated their blood, and rendered them ill-disposed and mischievous.”
“I have made a soap-boiler costive; it was my masterpiece.”
“Larkin had the reputation of being the most costive of artists.”
“You must be frank, but without indiscretion; and close, without being costive.”
Letters to his son on The Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘costive’.
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Figuratively
Words with definitions containing "figuratively."
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Logolepsy
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reesetee Also means "slow, sluggish" or "stingy." Jun 30, 2008