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
- instructively adverb
- instructiveness noun
- noninstructive adjective
- noninstructively adverb
- noninstructiveness noun
- overinstructive adjective
- overinstructively adverb
- overinstructiveness noun
- uninstructive adjective
- uninstructively adverb
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
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.
For Goldhaber, the response to “Pipeline” became instructive for his work becoming less prescriptive.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 31, 2026
It's instructive to see how comfortable the four of them are in each other's company and with the position they find themselves in.
From BBC • Feb. 20, 2026
As geopolitical tensions ratchet ever higher, it may be instructive to look at just how exposed U.S. markets are to foreign investors.
From MarketWatch • Jan. 20, 2026
I was not heckling or mocking, but what followed was immediate — and instructive.
From Salon • Dec. 21, 2025
On her first day of the two months’ preliminary training, Briony’s humiliation in front of the class had been instructive.
From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
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.
