a. [? f. FORGE v.1 + -TIVE.] A Shakespearian word, of uncertain formation and meaning. Commonly taken as a derivative of FORGE v.1, and hence used by writers of the 19th c. for: Apt at ‘forging,’ inventive, creative.
1597. Shaks., 2 Hen. IV., IV. iii. 107. A good Sherris-Sack … makes it [the braine] apprehensiue, quicke, forgetive, full of nimble, fierie, and delectable shapes.
1752. Smart, On the sudden Death of a Clergyman, 11.
| Alas! thy slender vein, | |
| Nor mighty is to move, nor forgetive to feign, | |
| Impatient of a rein. |
1800. Malone, Life Dryden, Pr. Wks. I. I. 381–2. All these circumstances, with many others of inferior note, were merely the ‘nimble shapes’ and lively effusions of Corinna’s forgetive imagination.
1814. Cary, Dante, Purg., XVII. 14.
| O quick and forgetive power! that sometimes dost | |
| So rob us of ourselves, we take no mark | |
| Though round about us thousand trumpets clang. |
1871. M. Collins, Mrq. & Merch., I. iv. 127. Her temperament [was] strangely quick, sensitive, apprehensive, forgetive.
