prescriptive
adjective
Simple meaning
Pertaining to giving directives or rules.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
pruhskriptivSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
pɹəskˈɹɪptɪv
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Of or pertaining to prescribing or enjoining, especially an action or behavior based on a norm or standard.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: Of or pertaining to prescribing or enjoining, especially an action or behavior based on a norm or standard.
Used this way, prescriptive is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use prescriptive
- “Prescriptive grammar is concerned with norms of or rules for correct usage.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A grammar that is produced by prescriptive linguistics.
An account of how a language should be used instead of how it is actually used.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- normativeadjective
- grammaticaladjective
- prescriptionnoun
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.