Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

postformative

Word Rarity Very rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English

Syllables: post-for-ma-tive
IPA

23

Scrabble Score

13

Letters

4

Syllables

11

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

A formative element at the end.

adj

Forming or affecting something that comes before.

adj

Occurring after the formation (chiefly written post-formative, said in Islamic studies of the period following the Golden Age of Islam 786–861 CE).

Example Sentences

"The phenomenon of Berber verbs which are marked for person with both a preformative and a postformative affix […] finds a formally exact pendant in Canaanite, where there is one occurrence of the phenomenon in the Bible (Is 63:3 [אגאלתי]), but c. 20 occurrences in the Amarna tablets."
"It seems that Western observers of the Near East—and, in addition, a large percentage of the intellectuals of the Islamic world—can hardly imagine a society in which a struggle for truth does not continuously rage. But such a society seems to have been the case in large parts of the Islamic world of the postformative era. […]"

Etymology

From post- (prefix meaning ‘after’) + formative, modelled after preformative.

Word Breakdown

Prefix: post

Subject

Wiktionary places this term in Linguistics.

Inflected Forms

postformatives (plural)

Frequently Paired Words

postformation preformative

Questions

What does postformative mean?: A formative element at the end.
Where does postformative come from?: From post- (prefix meaning ‘after’) + formative, modelled after preformative.

How to pronounce postformative

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