disjunctive

American  

[dis-juhngk-tiv] / dɪsˈdʒʌŋk tɪv /

adjective

1. serving or tending to disjoin; separating; dividing; distinguishing.

2. Grammar.

   1. syntactically setting two or more expressions in opposition to each other, as but in poor but happy, or expressing an alternative, as or in this or that.

   2. not syntactically dependent upon some particular expression.

3. Logic.

   1. characterizing propositions that are disjunctions.

   2. (of a syllogism) containing at least one disjunctive proposition as a premise.

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noun

1. a statement, course of action, etc., involving alternatives.

2. Logic. disjunction.

3. Grammar. a disjunctive word.

disjunctive British  

/ dɪsˈdʒʌŋktɪv /

adjective

1. serving to disconnect or separate

2. grammar

   1. denoting a word, esp a conjunction, that serves to express opposition or contrast: but in the sentence She was poor but she was honest

   2. denoting an inflection of pronouns in some languages that is used alone or after a preposition, such as moi in French

3. Also: alternative.  logic relating to, characterized by, or containing disjunction

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noun

1. grammar

   1. a disjunctive word, esp a conjunction

   2. a disjunctive pronoun

2. logic a disjunctive proposition; disjunction

Other Word Forms

• disjunctively adverb
• nondisjunctive adjective
• nondisjunctively adverb

Etymology

Origin of disjunctive

1400–50; late Middle English < Late Latin disjunctīvus placed in opposition, equivalent to Latin disjunct ( us ) ( disjunct ) + -īvus -ive

Example Sentences

This common argument form is called a disjunctive syllogism.

From Textbooks • Jun. 15, 2022

After finishing its last page, he is heard to murmur: “So elementary … inchoate … a disjunctive … patchwork.”

From Washington Post • Mar. 23, 2022

But in Vice, the storytelling becomes even more disjunctive, more “multimedia,” more bluntly polemical, and more playfully perverse.

From Slate • Dec. 17, 2018

In the studio, Watteau used these figures like paper dolls, translating them into paint on canvas and composing oddly disjunctive scenes that seem at once ordinary and mysterious.

From New York Times • Jul. 14, 2016

That one moment of it proliferates into the next by transitions which, whether conjunctive or disjunctive, continue the experiential tissue, can not, I contend, be denied.

From Essays in Radical Empiricism by James, William