Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Serving to denote; denotative; specifically, denoting by means of arbitrary terms, or by terms which have no natural association with the idea expressed: opposed to connotive.
Wiktionary
- adj. Serving to denote something.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Serving to denote.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. having the power of explicitly denoting or designating or naming
Etymologies
- denote + -ive? (Wiktionary)
Examples
“The aborigines were at the time of discovery, and indeed most of them remain today, in the prescriptorial stage of culture, i.e., the stage in which ideas are crystallized, not by means of arbitrary symbols, but by means of arbitrary associations, (18) and in this stage names are connotive or descriptive, rather than denotive as in the scriptorial stage.”
“What is now needed is a rule of some kind leading scholars to use the same terms for the same things, and it would seem to matter little in the case of linguistic stocks what the nomenclature is, provided it becomes denotive and universal.”
“It is believed that a name should be simply a denotive word, and that no advantage can accrue from a descriptive or connotive title.”
“The newborn markers were ofttimes given denotive labels.”
“It seemed to Rosalie that whenever she projected any plan to Miss Salmon -- as to "do" a pit at a theatre -- or any theory -- as that men and not women were manifestly the cat tribe -- it seemed to her that Miss Salmon always hummed with the maddening humming denotive of disapproval, and always prefaced stupendously stubborn idiocy with the "Well, now" and the gulp that alone were sufficient to drive enthusiasm crazy.”
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