constative
/ˈkɒnstətɪv/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Pertaining to an utterance relaying information and likely to be regarded as true or false.
noun
An utterance relaying information and likely to be regarded as true or false.
Example Sentences
- "Statements are constative utterances."
- "One thing, however, that it will be more dangerous to do, and that we are very prone to do, is to take it that we somehow know that the primary or primitive use of sentences must be, because it ought to be, statemental or constative, in the philosophers' preferred sense of simply uttering something whose sole pretension is to be true or false and which is not liable to criticism in any other dimension."
- "The distinction between constatives and performatives is one of the distinctions that he starts questioning."
Etymology
Coined to translate the German konstatierend, using cōnstāt-, the perfect passive participial stem of the Latin verb cōnstō (“to agree, correspond, or fit; to am certain, decided, or consistent”), suffixed with the English -ive, suggesting a hypothetical Latin etymon of the form *cōnstātīvus.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: konstatierend, -
Regional Pronunciation
- British English: /ˈkɒnstətɪv/