performative
/pɚfˈɔɹmətɪv/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.63 in modern English
22
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
4
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Being enacted as it is said.
adj
Insincere, inauthentic or disingenuous; done solely or largely as a performance, to produce an impression or enhance one's reputation.
noun
Example Sentences
- "Saying "I do" as part of a wedding ceremony is performative, enacting a marriage."
- "Thus in the example: 'By saying “I do” I was marrying her', the performative 'I do' is a means to the end of marriage. Here 'saying' is used in the sense in which it takes inverted commas and is using words or language, a phatic and not[…]"
- "We were beginning to suspect that her ethical qualms were sometimes performative, as the urgent need for fairness and justice seemed to apply to some people but not to others."
- "Although the seeming copycat nature of the plots in Port Huran and Conyers was terrifying because of their repetitive, performative, even texted nature—their seeming theatricality—more harrowing was the threat that, like theater, the performance would settle quickly into repetition compulsions in schools across the nation."
- "With the danger of science becoming purely “performative” (Lyotard 1984), not seeking any pretense of “truth” but simply performing a service for those in charge while still occupying its decision-making role in a technocratically dominated political sphere […]"
- "The Harambe meme soon became the perfect parody of the sentimentality and absurd priorities of Western liberal performative politics and the online mass hysteria that often characterized it."
Etymology
Etymology tree English perform Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂tos Proto-Italic *-ātos Latin -ātuslbor. English -ate Proto-Indo-European *-wós Proto-Indo-European *-iHwósder. Latin -īvus Old French -ifbor. Middle English -yf English -ive English -ative English performative From perform + -ative.