distinctive

Pluraldistinctives

1. 1
   adjective

   Serving to set something apart and mark it off from other things of the same kind.

   The car's distinctive shape makes it easy to spot in a crowded parking lot.

   Each valley produces cheeses with distinctive flavors that set one farm apart from the next.

   Similarcharacteristic, distinguishing, unique, individual, unmistakable

   Oppositecommon, ordinary, nondescript

   Note

   The root image is physical. Latin distinguere meant "to push apart, to divide", and a distinctive mark pushes one thing apart from others of its kind, whether that mark is packaging, a shape or a style of dress. Philip Stubbes, in The Anatomie of Abuses (1583), places the word after its noun: apparel was "a signe distinctiue" between the sexes. Modern English puts it before the noun, as in distinctive packaging.

2. 2
   adjective

   Characteristic of a particular person, group, or thing; typical of them.

   The bold brushwork is distinctive of the Impressionist painters.

   Heavy brass sections are distinctive of New Orleans jazz.

   Similarcharacteristic, typical, representative

   Oppositeuncharacteristic, atypical

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A quality or property that sets something apart and lets one tell it from others.

   Transparency is a key distinctive of the company's culture.

   The guidebook lists the distinctives that separate one wine region from another.

   Similarcharacteristic, feature, hallmark, trait, attribute

4. 4
   adjective

   In linguistics, serving to distinguish one word's meaning from another, as when a sound feature signals a change in meaning.

   Vowel length is distinctive in some languages but makes no difference in English.

   Linguists check whether a contrast is distinctive by finding word pairs that differ in only one sound.

   Similarcontrastive

   Note

   Phonology gives the word a precise test: a sound difference is distinctive when changing it changes which word is heard. L. Bloomfield and his co-authors, writing in Language in 1927, set phonemes beside "distinctive features" as the units worth writing down. A difference that speakers can hear but that never separates two words is real, but it is not distinctive.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A belief, teaching, or doctrine that sets one denomination or sect apart from others.

   Believer's baptism remains a central distinctive of the Baptist tradition.

   The seminary course compared the distinctives of several Protestant denominations.

   Similartenet, doctrine, belief

   Note

   Church writing uses the noun for the teachings that make one body recognizably itself. It sits naturally in the plural after the body's name. Theron F. Schlabach (1979) writes of "the Mennonite distinctives", the tenets Mennonites carried with them even when they left Western chauvinism behind. In general prose, distinguishing beliefs says the same thing without the specialist ring.

6. 6
   noundialectalHebrewcountable

   A distinguishing accent; a manner of pronunciation that marks a speaker as coming from a particular place.

   Her speech carried a distinctive that placed her instantly in the north.

   Dialect surveys record the regional distinctives heard across the country.

   Similaraccent

   Note

   Hebrew grammarians turned the adjective into a name for the clause-dividing accents themselves. These accents come in degrees of strength, so a grammar can rank them against each other. Andrew Bruce Davidson's grammar of 1874 does exactly that: "A distinctive of less power than Zakeph is Ṭiphḥâ." The plural, distinctives, names the whole set of dividing accents.

7. 7
   adjectivedialectalHebrew

   In grammar, used to separate clauses in place of periods, dividing a passage into smaller units.

   In medieval manuscripts, a distinctive sign often separated clauses where modern writers place a period.

   The editor catalogued the distinctive marks the scribe used instead of periods.

   Note

   Hebrew grammar applies the word to its accents, not to punctuation in general. A distinctive accent marks a pause that divides a passage into clauses, doing the work a stop does in English. Andrew Bruce Davidson's Introductory Hebrew Grammar (1874) tells the reader that by stopping at these accents he "will do justice to the sense." The accent itself, used as a noun, is a distinctive.

Showing meanings only. Show all 9