a. and sb. [ad. L. appellātīvus, f. appellāt-: see APPEAL v. and -IVE.]
A. adj. Having the characteristic of naming.
1. Designating a class; common as opposed to proper.
1520. Whitinton, Vulg. (1527), 4 b. If they be nownes appellatyue.
1590. Swinburn, Testaments, 179 b. By names appellatiue … I vnderstand euerie name, which is common or maie comprehend diuers persons.
1755. Johnson, Pref. Dict., Wks. IX. 203. As my design was a dictionary, common or appellative, I have omitted all words which have relation to proper names.
1882. J. Robertson, trans. Müller’s Heb. Synt., 48. Words that have almost or entirely lost their appellative meaning as … ‘Abyss,’ ‘The deep.’
† 2. Of the nature of an appellation, or descriptive name given to a thing or person. Obs.
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts, 111. Many particular Dogs, and their names appellative … as Scylax, Speude, Alke, Rome.
1654. Gayton, Fest. Notes, IV. iii. 191. All Knights and doughty men gave to themselves some name appellative.
3. Of or pertaining to the giving of names.
1860. Farrar, Orig. Lang., iii. 64. The appellative faculty in the savage and in the infant.
B. sb.
1. A ‘common’ noun or name applicable to any one member of a whole class.
1591. Percivall, Sp. Dict., Of the Substantiues some be proper, as Vasco, Alonso. Some common, called also appellatiues, as Arbol, a tree.
1612. Brinsley, Lud. Lit., 76. Your rules of Appellatiues, or Common Nownes.
1747. Johnson, Plan Dict., Wks. 1787, IX. 171. Appellatives, or the names of species.
1854. De Quincey, in Page, Life, II. xviii. 86. Appellatives, words not expressing an individual but a class or species.
2. That which a thing or person is ‘called’; an appellation, designation, or descriptive name.
1632. Sanderson, 12 Serm., 140. The Philistims called their Kings by a peculiar appellatiue.
a. 1733. North, Lives, III. 112. Whig and Tory … were the appellatives; but the mythology was seditious and loyal.
1814. Scott, Wav., III. iv. 52. Wily Will justified his appellative.
1869. Gladstone, Juv. Mundi, ii. 31. The several appellatives by which Homer describes the army engaged in the siege of Troy.
