quantitative

American  

[kwon-ti-tey-tiv] / ˈkwɒn tɪˌteɪ tɪv /

Sometimes quantitive

adjective

1. that is or may be estimated by quantity.

2. of or relating to the describing or measuring of quantity.

3. of or relating to a metrical system, as that of classical verse, based on the alternation of long and short, rather than accented and unaccented, syllables.

4. of or relating to the length of a spoken vowel or consonant.

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quantitative British  

/ ˈkwɒntɪtətɪv, -ˌteɪ- /

adjective

1. involving or relating to considerations of amount or size Compare qualitative

2. capable of being measured

3. prosody denoting or relating to a metrical system, such as that in Latin and Greek verse, that is based on the relative length rather than stress of syllables

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Other Word Forms

• nonquantitative adjective
• nonquantitativeness noun
• quantitatively adverb
• quantitativeness noun
• quantitively adverb
• quantitiveness noun
• unquantitative adjective

Etymology

Origin of quantitative

First recorded in 1575–85; from Medieval Latin quantitātīvus, equivalent to Latin quantitāt- (stem of quantitās “amount”) + -īvus adjective suffix; see origin at quantity, -ive

Explanation

If your boss asks you to do a quantitative analysis of this month's ice cream sales, he's not asking you to talk about how pleasant the customer interactions were. He wants numbers: how many cones did you sell of each flavor? If quantitative sounds like the word quantity to you, you're on the right track. Something that's quantitative is expressed in terms of quantity. When you're trying to figure out how well your new business is doing, there are all sorts of factors you need to think about, but only some of them can be measured in numbers. Those are quantitative. The other things, like say, how pleasant the room feels, would be qualitative, a word that's often paired with quantitative.

Example Sentences

Jane Street, the notoriously secretive quantitative trading firm, committed $6 billion to deploy and scale its AI tools on CoreWeave’s cloud platform, the two companies announced.

From Barron's • Apr. 15, 2026

The reasons for the rise in what’s known as the term premium could surround concerns about the widening U.S. budget deficit, and/or the Fed’s quantitative tightening as it reduces its balance sheet.

From MarketWatch • Mar. 30, 2026

"Quantitatively, there may be refinements. For example, the current treatment includes gravity in a static, lowest-order approximation. The pulsar is rotating, and including rotational effects could introduce quantitative changes, though not qualitative ones."

From Science Daily • Mar. 28, 2026

That other Greek concept is chronos, which refers to chronological or sequential time and is quantitative.

From Salon • Mar. 27, 2026

One kind of monetary policy, which involves the central bank buying private assets, is chunked as quantitative easing.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker

Related Words

• extensive
• indiscriminate
• large-scale
• sweeping