relative
/ˈɹɛl.ə.tɪv/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.48 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
3
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
adj
Expressed in relation to another item, rather than in complete form.
adj
adj
Capable to be changed by other beings or circumstance; conditional.
Example Sentences
- "We've been discussing the relative merits of various methods of transportation."
- "I once knew a case—possibly I read of it—where a pack of cards lay on the floor. It was a murder case and the guilt or innocence of an accused man depended on the relative positions of the fifty-first and fifty-second cards."
- "For Liverpool, their season will now be regarded as a relative disappointment after failure to add the FA Cup to the Carling Cup and not mounting a challenge to reach the Champions League places."
- "It is thought that the autistic mind is more intimately connected with objective reality via its external sensory focus on reality and its superior understanding of physical causality, relative to neurotypical persons (Baron-Cohen et al. 1999; Paganini and Gaido 2013) and is therefore less susceptible to supernatural experiences or explanations."
- "The relative URL /images/pic.jpg, when evaluated in the context of http://example.com/index.html, corresponds to the absolute URL http://example.com/images/pic.jpg."
- "The words “big” and “small” are relative."
Etymology
From Middle French relatif, from Late Latin relātīvus, from Latin relātus, perfect passive participle of referō (“to carry back, to ascribe”), from re- (“again”) + ferō (“to bear or carry”). By surface analysis, relate + -ive.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Usage
Inflected Forms
rel. (alternative, abbreviation)
relatives (plural)