a. (sb.) [a. OF. formatif, -ive (12th c.), as if ad. L. *formātīiv-us, f. formāre to form: see -IVE.] A. adj.
1. Having the faculty of forming or fashioning.
1490. Caxton, Eneydos, xvi. 64. The arteres formatyue of speche were stopped wythin hym.
1614. Selden, Titles of Honor, Pref. B iv. In the Seed are alwaies potentially seuerall indiuiduating Qualities deriu’d from diuers of the neere Ancestors, which by the formatiue power of the Parents may be exprest in the Children, with respectiue habitude to either Sex.
1653. Gauden, Hierasp., 74. All other creatures rising up, as bubbles on water, so soon as the formative Word of God, in its several commands, fell like distinct drops from Heaven, on the face of the great deep, the Chaos, or Abyss.
1824. Examiner, 451/2. Associations formative of lasting mind and character.
1859. Darwin, Orig. Spec., ix. (1873), 235. Hybrids, on the other hand, have their reproductive organs functionally impotent, as may be clearly seen in the state of the male element in both plants and animals; though the formative organs themselves are perfect in structure, as far as the microscope reveals.
2. Of or pertaining to formation or moulding.
1850. Leitch, trans. Müller’s Anc. Art, § 346. 417. As the formative art has the imitation of nature assigned to it for its forms, so also it is referred for its subjects to matters of positive existence; neither can it create any spiritual beings from pure arbitrary will, but must be prompted and sustained by presupposition and a certain belief of their existence.
1867. J. Hogg, Microsc., II. i. 256. The object proposed is to give a slight sketch of the formative processes of plant life, chiefly in its relation to the earliest, or cell condition.
1875. Whitney, Life Lang., iv. 46. In the early formative period of the Christian church, it [bishop] was selected as official designation of the person to whom was committed the oversight of the affairs of a little Christian community.
3. Biol. and Path. (See quots.)
1877. Bennett, trans. Thomé’s Bot., 41. Both owe their special character to the formation of new cells or organs by means of a special tissue to which the names of formative or generating tissue and meristem have been given.
1894. Duane, Dict. Med., Formative. Producing, or attended with the production of, new tissue.
4. Gram. Serving to form words: said chiefly of flexional and derivative suffixes or prefixes.
1711. J. Greenwood, An Essay towards a Practical English Grammar, 186. For they [our Ancestors] were mighty careful to contract whatever Words they receiv’d from other Languages, into one Syllable, tho’ they were in the Original long, or of many Syllables: And to this end they not only cut off the formative Terminations, but even the Heads or beginnings of Words.
1797. W. Taylor, in Monthly Mag., III. May, 338/1. The English much neglect the use of formative syllables, and prefer expressing the relation, connection, and dependence of words by auxiliary particles, to expressing them by inflections of the words themselves.
1872. Morris, Eng. Accid., xviii. 211. To get at the root of a word we must remove all the formative elements, and such changes of vowel as have been produced by the addition of relational syllables.
B. sb. Gram. a. A formative element (see A. 4). b. ‘A word formed in accordance with some rule or usage, as from a root’ (W.). (Cf. derivative.)
1816. Quarterly Review, XV. 363. The element or formative, he seems to think, is employed to express the thing which modifies or connects itself with the idea suggested by the primitive.
1865. J. Davies, Temporal Augment, 31. In this language [Kaffir] prefixed particles or augments are used as verbal formatives, and as they are still in use as independent verbs, the origin of the augments does not admit of doubt.
Hence Formatively adv.; Formativeness.
1654. trans. Behmen’s Myst. Magnum, xxxvii. 254. That which he introduced out of the deity into the humanity, that is, neither nature, nor creature, yet in our humanity formatively, but immense, uncircumscribed, not particular.
1849. Fraser’s Mag., XXXIX. 664/1. June, These are the pure links of nature, wholly innocent of human formativeness!
1874. Pusey, Lent. Serm., 318. It is to be part of the self-deceit of the last days, to own religion as something which should form the soul, ‘having or holding,’ S. Paul says, a ‘formativeness of godliness, but having’ practically denied or repudiated ‘its power.’ Note, μόρφωσιν 2 Tim. iii. 5.
