prescriptive

[ pri-skrip-tiv ]

adjective

1. that prescribes; giving directions or injunctions:

   a prescriptive letter from an anxious father.

2. depending on or arising from effective legal prescription, as a right or title established by a long unchallenged tenure.

prescriptive

/ prɪˈskrɪptɪv /

adjective

1. making or giving directions, rules, or injunctions
2. sanctioned by long-standing usage or custom
3. derived from or based upon legal prescription

   a prescriptive title

Derived Forms

• preˈscriptively, adverb
• preˈscriptiveness, noun

Other Words From

• pre·scrip·tive·ly adverb
• pre·scrip·tive·ness noun
• non·pre·scrip·tive adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of prescriptive¹

First recorded in 1740–50; prescript + -ive, modeled on descriptive, destructive, etc.

Example Sentences

It’s trying to be descriptive, not prescriptive, and to give a sense of the way life has been lived, whatever way that has been.

From Washington Post

What’s changed is whether or not we are prescriptive in trying to boil things down to a few numbers.

From MIT Technology Review

Publishers are learning to be less prescriptive about what their communities need.

From Digiday

This design is in no way prescriptive of what you should do for your own Forester, other Subaru models, or any other vehicle that you already have.

From Outside Online

Admittedly, I wanted period tracking to be a fix, and to offer me a prescriptive path back to better fitness and strength.

From Outside Online

The fact that some prescriptive rules are valuable does not mean that every grammatical injunction should be obeyed.

From The Daily Beast

It was descriptive, prescriptive, and exemplary in its clarity.

From The Daily Beast

For better or worse, the standards are not very prescriptive.

From The Daily Beast

Simmons knows she faces an uphill battle—but her goal this time around is to be prescriptive about the problem.

From The Daily Beast

In accordance with a prescriptive right, this remonstrance was received by the king in person on March 14.

From Project Gutenberg

No institution, no branch of legislature, no church, no prerogative or prescriptive claim has any rights against the Right.

From Project Gutenberg

Woman's prescriptive infirmity had stalked into the sunlight, which had clothed it in the freshness of an originality.

From Project Gutenberg

No merely prescriptive external rules, borrowed from society when the mothers were girls, can fully answer the purpose.

From Project Gutenberg

A prescriptive government, such as ours, never was the work of any legislator, never was made upon any foregone theory.

From Project Gutenberg