Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Expressing or designating repeated action.
- n. A frequentative verb or verb form.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- In grammar, serving to express the repetition of an action: as, dictito is a frequentative verb.
- n. A verb which denotes the frequent occurrence or repetition of an action, as dictito (Latin) from dicto, vāvadīti (Sanskrit) from vadati, waggle from wag.
- n. Abbreviated freq.
Wiktionary
- adj. grammar Serving to express repetition of an action.
- n. grammar Refers to a subclass of imperfective verbs that denote a repeated action, no longer productive in English, but found in e.g. Finnish, Latin, Russian, and Turkish.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. (Gram.) Serving to express the frequent repetition of an action.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a verb form that serves to express frequent repetition of an action
Etymologies
- From Late Latin frequentativus, from Latin frequentare ("to do or use often"); see frequent. Surface analysis is frequent + -ative. (Wiktionary)
- Latin frequentātīvus, from frequentātus, past participle of frequentāre, to repeat, from frequēns, frequent-, frequent. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“frequentative" of WAG, thus meaning ` to wag frequently ”
“Spanish ‘jactar’ must come directly from the Latin single frequentative iactare, which also means among other things ‘boast’.”
“What cerebration accompanied his frequentative act?”
“Some call it “frequentative,” but they need preventive, not preventative, medicine.”
“I agree with you on preventative, but you should know that frequentative is still the standard term in teaching frequentative Latin verbs to Latin students.”
“It may be plain that the Fr. _dompter_ (whence _daunt_) is not directly from _domare_, but not so plain, as it seems to us, that it is not directly from the frequentative form domitare.”
“Everything in this verse hinges on the translation of metsach (ch) eq, which we have rendered, "was (always) mocking" -- the "always" to cover the frequentative participle.”
“In this connection, fitting in very well with our interpretation, the frequentative participle indicates a thing that Sarah had observed quite regularly in Ishmael's attitude toward Isaac -- "always mocking.”
“The suffix "- ad -" is used to form words indicating that the action expressed in the root is continuous, habitual or repeated.a. Verbs formed with the suffix "- ad -" are called "frequentative verbs", and may often be translated by the root meaning, preceded by”
“The Russian verb has commonly a simple and a frequentative future.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘frequentative’.
-
Random Words
lochia, confused, innoxious, naive, cockatrice, derisive, parsley, passive, casual, football, innuendo, Rumanian and 200 more...
-
This week's words
hand-handled, crouch, hootchy-kootchy, gloriole, glory hole, metempsychosis, doctrinaire, transmigration, celestial, treetop, luxuriant, physic and 102 more...
-
Learned (or Encountered) in Reading
I have a list for words learned from Newsweek; here's where I keep all the stuff from other shit I read.
Except when I'm looking stuff up and find new words that way. Those go on their...cellie, laminectomy, mridangam, terroir, hypospadias, crus, corpora cavernosa, crura, uretheral meatus, bartholin's gland, coloquintida, colopexy and 921 more...
-
Adjectival Arcana
A roster of adjectives that infrequently surface in typical conversation and writing. Many are dredged from scientific or other technical jargon or sieved from examples of disused archaic forms.
unitegmic, acaulescent, reticuloendothelial, ingressive, uniate, acanthopterygian, ossific, epiphysial, perivisceral, acœlomatous, cestoid, acælomate and 7756 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for frequentative.

Dan337 More examples may be found (or recorded) on the lists “Frequentative”and “Infrequentative”. Sep 18, 2011