intensive

Pluralintensives

1. 1
   adjective

   Involving a great deal of activity in a short period of time, and highly concentrated.

   The bootcamp offered intensive instruction, condensing months of material into ten days.

   Negotiators held intensive talks through the weekend to reach a deal before Monday.

   Similarconcentrated, intense, accelerated, rigorous

2. 2
   adjective

   Using or requiring a great amount of a particular resource; demanding, and often combined with the noun naming that resource.

   Hand-finishing each piece makes the work intensive, swallowing far more hours than machine production.

   Software development is labor-intensive, with most costs going to skilled staff.

   Similardemanding, laborious

   Note

   Mostly a combining word, written after the resource it names: labor-intensive, capital-intensive, water-intensive. The compound says what an activity consumes most heavily. A labor-intensive job is costly in hours, but it is not necessarily difficult. The hyphen stays wherever the compound stands, so you write both labor-intensive work and the work is labor-intensive.

3. 3
   adjective

   Done with great intensity or to a high degree; thorough and concentrated.

   The committee conducted an intensive review of every contract from the past decade.

   Athletes follow an intensive conditioning program in the weeks before a championship.

   Similarthorough, exhaustive, rigorous, concentrated, comprehensive

   Oppositesuperficial

   Note

   The general sense, and the one nearest the word's origin: Late Middle English intensive meant "fervent, great, intense," borrowed from Old French intensif and built like intense plus -ive. In use it praises depth over breadth. Rudolf Schuster in 1992 sets intensive study of a limited suite of collections against superficial study of everything at hand. Superficial is its natural opposite; unintensive and nonintensive are flatter negations.

4. 4
   adjective

   Of care or treatment, involving a high level of life support, close monitoring and great effort to manage life-threatening conditions.

   The newborn was placed under intensive care to stabilize her breathing.

   Burn victims often require intensive treatment to prevent infection and support failing organs.

   Similarcritical, aggressive

   Note

   Hospital language, almost always heard in the fixed phrase intensive care. Before another noun the phrase takes a hyphen, as in the intensive-care unit. Standing alone it is written open: she is in intensive care. Because such care is usually given in a dedicated unit, the phrase often names a place as much as a kind of treatment.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A short, concentrated course that packs much activity and learning into a brief period.

   He enrolled in a summer writing intensive to finish his manuscript.

   The language school offers several intensives during the holidays.

   Similarworkshop

   Note

   Education's shorthand for a phrase like intensive course: the adjective has become a noun, carrying over the sense of the "highly concentrated" adjective. It is countable and takes a regular plural, intensives. It usually comes with a word naming when or what: summer intensives, a writing intensive, a language intensive. Without such a modifier the bare noun can sound like insider jargon, so outside academic settings the full phrase is often clearer.

6. 6
   adjective

   Of a word: serving to give emphasis or added force to another element.

   Reflexive pronouns can act as intensive elements, as in 'the president herself signed it.'

   The intensive adverb 'utterly' sharpens the force of the adjective it precedes.

   Similaremphatic

   Note

   A grammarian's term for words and particles that add force rather than content: an intensive adverb, verb or preposition. Edward Topsell in 1608 calls Greek alpha "an intensive particle" when deriving the word asp, so the label is an old one. Intensative is a rarer synonym. The same word as a noun names the emphatic form itself, as in the linguistic noun.

7. 7
   adjective

   Of agriculture: aimed at increasing the productivity of a given area of land through heavy inputs.

   Intensive agriculture relies on heavy fertilizer use to maximize yields per acre.

   Critics argue that intensive farming damages soil over time.

   Similarindustrial

   Oppositeextensive

   Note

   Farmers and economists use it as one half of a pair, opposite extensive. Intensive farming puts heavy inputs of labor, capital or chemicals into each unit of land to raise its output. Extensive farming spreads lighter inputs over more ground. The word measures input per acre, not the size of the farm, so a small plot can be farmed intensively and a vast range extensively.

8. 8
   nouncountable

   Something that makes another thing more intense; in language, a word form carrying a stronger sense than the root it is built from.

   In some languages, an intensive is formed by reduplicating the root syllable.

   The suffix turns the plain verb into an intensive with a more forceful meaning.

   Similarintensifier

   Note

   The adjective put to work as a label for the thing itself. Broadly it means anything that heightens intensity. Linguists narrow it to a word form whose sense is stronger than the root it is built on. It is the noun counterpart of the grammatical adjective, which describes emphatic words rather than naming them.

9. 9
   adjective

   Relating to inner or internal intensity or strength rather than outward extent or size.

   Physicists call temperature and density intensive properties, since they do not depend on the amount of material.

   Pressure is an intensive quantity, unchanged whether measured in a small or large container.

   Oppositeextensive

   Note

   Physics makes the sharpest use of it, pairing intensive with extensive. Temperature, pressure and density are intensive: split a sample in half and they stay the same. Mass and volume are extensive, because they scale with the amount of material. The test is simple. If doubling the system doubles the quantity, the quantity is not intensive in this sense.

10. 10
    adjective

    In the process of being made more intense or stronger.

    The debate turned intensive as both sides pressed their points harder.

    Under the steady heat, the reaction became intensive and harder to control.

    Similarheated, fierce, vigorous

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