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
Australian languages agglutinative, not uniform throughout the continent and unconnected with any other group.
From Man, Past and Present by Haddon, Alfred Court
For they alone instinctively divined the new spirit of the age, which may be termed co-operative and agglutinative.
From England and Germany by Hughes, William Morris
The main differences shown by these varieties are agglutinative differences.
From Food Poisoning by Jordan, Edwin Oakes
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.
