Definitions

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

  • adjective Serving or tending to suspend or temporarily stop something.
  • adjective Characterized by or causing suspense.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Tending to suspend, or to keep in suspense; causing interruption; uncertain; doubtful; deliberative.
  • Having the power to suspend the operation of something.

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

  • adjective Tending to suspend, or to keep in suspense; causing interruption or delay; uncertain; doubtful.
  • adjective condition (Scots Law), a condition precedent, or a condition without the performance of which the contract can not be completed.

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

  • adjective That suspends (temporarily stops)
  • adjective Characterized by suspense; suspenseful

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

  • adjective (of a situation) characterized by or causing suspense
  • adjective undecided or characterized by indecisiveness

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Tananarive, for instance, has a trait I've seen far more frequently among women than men: she talks in suspensive sentences, postponing the object for clause after clause, and sometimes sentence after sentence, as if working from the outside in.

    Archive 2009-09-01 Steven Barnes 2009

  • Tananarive, for instance, has a trait I've seen far more frequently among women than men: she talks in suspensive sentences, postponing the object for clause after clause, and sometimes sentence after sentence, as if working from the outside in.

    Facebook Healings Steven Barnes 2009

  • The affection of Camilla was nearly reciprocal, but her pleasure had no chance of equal participation; nor was the suspensive state of her mind the only impediment; opposite to her in the carriage, and immediately claiming her attention, was Mrs. Mittin.

    Camilla 2008

  • In this suspensive state of mind, to cast himself upon his sagacious friend seemed

    Camilla 2008

  • He found no longer any difficulty in promising not to act with precipitance; his confidence was gone; his elevation of sentiment was depressed; a general mist clouded his prospects, and a suspensive discomfort inquieted his mind.

    Camilla 2008

  • Camilla could not endure to keep her sister a moment in this suspensive state, and made an excuse for quitting the table that she might instantly seek the manuscript.

    Camilla 2008

  • And when he considered himself as exactly in the same suspensive embarrassment, as a young man of little more than a fortnight's acquaintance, he felt indignantly ashamed of so humiliating a rivalry, and a strong diminution of regret at his present purpose.

    Camilla 2008

  • In this suspensive state, fearing to call, to move, or almost to breathe, she remained, in perfect stillness, and in the dark, till little

    Camilla 2008

  • The provisional and suspensive attitude was intolerable to her impetuous genius, and the gaps which scientific investigation was unable to fill were straightway hidden behind an artificial screen of metaphysical phantasies.

    Voltaire 2007

  • The tree-trunks, the road, the out-buildings, the garden, every object wore that aspect of mesmeric fixity which the suspensive quietude of daybreak lends to such scenes.

    The Woodlanders 2006

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