quantitative
Americanadjective
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that is or may be estimated by quantity.
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of or relating to the describing or measuring of quantity.
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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.
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of or relating to the length of a spoken vowel or consonant.
adjective
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involving or relating to considerations of amount or size Compare qualitative
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capable of being measured
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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
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; 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.
Vocabulary lists containing quantitative
TEKS ELAR Academic Vocabulary List (5th-7th grades)
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The Scientific Method
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Word Generation Science - Scientific Thinking
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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.
Closing above the 50-day moving average can trigger quantitative funds with price-based algorithms to buy in.
From MarketWatch • Apr. 16, 2026
That other Greek concept is chronos, which refers to chronological or sequential time and is quantitative.
From Salon • Mar. 27, 2026
But the flushout of gold presents what SentimenTrader calls “a very compelling quantitative setup.”
From Barron's • Mar. 25, 2026
Alexander Hübbert, a quantitative researcher working on his Ph.D. at Stockholm University, ran some numbers recently that make it crystal clear.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 19, 2026
It was the first time that he ever thought a blush could have a measurable, quantitative dimension.
From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy
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.
