agglutinative
Americanadjective
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tending or having power to agglutinate or unite.
an agglutinative substance.
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Linguistics. pertaining to or noting a language, as Turkish, characterized by agglutination.
adjective
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tending to join or capable of joining
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Also: agglomerative. linguistics denoting languages, such as Hungarian, whose morphology is characterized by agglutination Compare analytic synthetic polysynthetic
Other Word Forms
- antiagglutinative adjective
- nonagglutinative adjective
Etymology
Origin of agglutinative
First recorded in 1625–35; agglutinate + -ive
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
This frugality, its most basic trait, is then tempered by its second most basic trait, its agglutinative nature—the construction of words by the incessant addition of prefixes and suffixes to the roots.
From The New Yorker • Oct. 24, 2016
One day, discussing Turkish, he asked a visitor if he knew what an agglutinative language was.
From New York Times • Mar. 9, 2012
As far as the formal part of language is concerned, we cannot resist the conclusion that what is now inflectional was formerly agglutinative, and what is now agglutinative was at first radical.
From Lectures on The Science of Language by Müller, Max
Australian languages agglutinative, not uniform throughout the continent and unconnected with any other group.
From Man, Past and Present by Haddon, Alfred Court
Their language is like that of the Magyars, an agglutinative tongue with tendencies towards inflections, but their physical structure allies them more nearly to the Teutons.
From Races and Immigrants in America by Commons, John R. (John Rogers)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
