detersive
Americanadjective
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of detersive
1580–90; < Middle French détersif < Latin dēters ( us ) (past participle of dētergēre; see deterge) + -if -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.
The Patient should gargle himself after the Discharge of it with the detersive, or cleansing Gargarism Nº.
From Advice to the people in general, with regard to their health by Tissot, S. A. D. (Samuel Auguste David)
If, again, grief were an antiseptic for future misdeeds or a detersive for past faults, one might again understand, but now it falls indifferently on the bad and on the good; it is blind.
From En Route by Huysmans, J.-K. (Joris-Karl)
The wood of it is full of sap, and as it burns sends forth a very biting smoke; and the ashes of it thoroughly burnt are so acrimonious, that they make a lye extremely detersive.
From Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3: Essays and Miscellanies by Plutarch
In the first case, we see evidence of exanthematic diseases, which present only the lightest forms of detersive disorders, such as measles, scarlatina, or that more serious one, from its pustulous form, the small-pox.
From On the cattle plague: or, Contagious typhus in horned cattle. Its history, origin, description, and treatment by Bourguignon, Honor?
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.
