a. [f. L. ēmōt- ppl. stem of ēmovē-re to move out + -IVE.]
1. † a. Causing movement (obs.). b. Tending to excite or capable of exciting emotion.
1735. H. Brooke, Univ. Beauty, IV. 121. Eternal art, Emotive, pants within the alternate heart.
1883. H. M. Kennedy, trans. Ten Brink’s E. E. Lit., 38. The emotive passionate quality of epic diction.
2. Pertaining to the emotions, or to emotion.
1830. Mackintosh, Eth. Philos., Wks. 1846, I. 160–1. Distinction between the percipient and what, perhaps, we may venture to call the emotive or the pathematic part of human nature.
1855. H. Spencer, Princ. Psychol. (1870), I. 484. Actions … at once, conscious, rational, and emotive.
1876. Geo. Eliot, Dan. Der., VII. lii. 492. It prepared her emotive nature for a deeper effect.
b. Eminently capable of emotion, emotional.
1881. Mrs. C. Praed, Policy & P., II. 30. One must … feel with the emotive—see with the spiritual.
Hence Emotively adv., emotionally. Emotiveness, the quality of being emotional. Emotivity, the capacity for emotion.
1884. Athenæum, 5 April, 438/1. Thoughts must be emotively expressed before they can become poetry.
1876. Geo. Eliot, Dan. Der., xl. Sympathetic emotiveness … ran along with his speculative tendency.
1854. Hickok, Ment. Philos., 176. Emotivity [is a] term for the capacity of feeling.
