instructive
Americanadjective
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serving to instruct or inform; conveying instruction, knowledge, or information; enlightening.
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Grammar. noting a case, as in Finnish, whose distinctive function is to indicate means by which.
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of instructive
Explanation
Instructive means "useful and informative." Say you're visiting Paris and looking for the Eiffel Tower when a friendly Parisian native helpfully stops to draw you a map. "Merci," you say. "This map is very instructive." In English, anything that informs or enlightens is instructive, but in the Finnish language there's something called the instructive case, which is a whole separate way of saying "by the means of." An example would be a sentence like "I traveled here by horse," which you would say differently than any other kind of sentence you might utter. You would also be speaking Finnish, so the information would only be instructive to Finns.
Vocabulary lists containing instructive
-ive
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stru, struct (make, build)
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stru, struct (make, build)
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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.
Those moves are instructive given the quickening inflation environment that has gripped markets since the U.S. war with Iran stoked global crude prices to the highest levels in four years.
From Barron's • Jun. 10, 2026
The gum trade — which earned Sudan $183 million in 2022 and supports some 5 million people, economic experts say — provides an instructive case:
From Los Angeles Times • May 31, 2026
At Tottenham, the Amazon documentary All or Nothing captured something instructive.
From BBC • May 13, 2026
The response from his intended audience was instructive.
From Salon • May 11, 2026
He also studied the games of Mark Taimanov, the 1956 champion of the Soviet Union—and a concert pianist—who introduced novelties in opening play that Fischer found instructive.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
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.
