Definitions

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

  • adjective Suffering from constipation.
  • adjective Causing constipation.
  • adjective Slow; sluggish.
  • adjective Stingy.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • 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.

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

  • adjective Retaining fecal matter in the bowels; having too slow a motion of the bowels; constipated.
  • adjective obsolete Reserved; formal; close; cold.
  • adjective obsolete Dry and hard; impermeable; unyielding.

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

  • adjective constipated
  • adjective miserly, parsimonious

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

  • adjective retarding evacuation of feces; binding; constipating

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English costif, from Old French costeve, past participle of costever, to constipate, from Latin cōnstīpāre; see constipate.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Anglo-Norman *costif, ultimately from Latin constipatus ‘constipated’.

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Examples

  • And it can be costive, which is the last thing she needs with that wound in her stomach.

    A Funeral In Blue Perry, Anne, 1938- 2001

  • 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 2010

  • 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.

    The Skating Rink by Roberto Bolaño – review Philip Hensher 2010

  • We become the social equivalent of banks that wont lend - we sit on our credit and credibility in a state of costive paranoia.

    Melik Kaylan: The Al Gore Smear: Gossip as an Instrument of Power 2010

  • We become the social equivalent of banks that wont lend - we sit on our credit and credibility in a state of costive paranoia.

    Melik Kaylan: The Al Gore Smear: Gossip as an Instrument of Power 2010

  • Says another costive patron, pant-button about to pop from the accumulation of unevaluated by-products:

    Tuesday, Feb. 24 – The Bleat. 2009

  • During the exacerbation most are restless, and most are costive constipated, hence the relentless laxatives.

    Bedlam Catharine Arnold 2008

  • During the exacerbation most are restless, and most are costive constipated, hence the relentless laxatives.

    Bedlam Catharine Arnold 2008

  • During the exacerbation most are restless, and most are costive constipated, hence the relentless laxatives.

    Bedlam Catharine Arnold 2008

  • The physician Hequet understood by slow bellies, that the Cretans were costive, which vitiated their blood, and rendered them ill-disposed and mischievous.

    A Philosophical Dictionary 2007

Comments

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  • Also means "slow, sluggish" or "stingy."

    June 30, 2008

  • "In many ways this aerated point of view appeared more troubling than the costive statement from which it had originated, and I was quite defeated in my efforts to distinguish anything amusing about it."

    Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett, p 56

    April 19, 2017