multiplicative
Americanadjective
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tending to multiply or increase, or having the power to multiply.
Smoking and asbestos exposure have a multiplicative effect on your risk of getting lung cancer.
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Mathematics of or relating to multiplication.
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relating to or noting a word or affix that indicates multiplication, as triple, threefold, or tri-.
adjective
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tending or able to multiply
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maths involving multiplication
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of multiplicative
First recorded in 1645–55; from Medieval Latin multiplicātīvus; see origin at multiplicate, -ive
Explanation
In math, anything that's described as multiplicative has something to do with repeatedly adding a number to itself. A simple multiplicative problem to solve is 3 X 3. Whenever you multiply one number by another, that's a multiplicative operation. Your math teacher might refer to multiplicative properties of certain numbers, too; "According to the multiplicative property of zero, no matter what number you multiply by zero, you'll always get an answer of zero." Multiplicative shares a Latin root with multiply, multiplex, which means "having many folds."
Vocabulary lists containing multiplicative
STAAR Grade 6 Mathematics: Computations and Algebraic Relationships
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STAAR Grade 5 Mathematics: Computations and Algebraic Relationships
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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.
Maybe all of these reasons have a multiplicative effect.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 16, 2025
This onslaught of disruption has a multiplicative effect on the bacteria, she added, making it 10 to 1000 times more difficult for them to develop resistance compared to conventional antibiotics.
From Science Daily • Feb. 21, 2024
The magnitude scale’s multiplicative factor is about 2.512.
From Scientific American • Jul. 28, 2023
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the unemployment insurance claims series used multiplicative factors to seasonally adjust the data.
From Reuters • Apr. 6, 2023
Numeral Adjectives are of three kinds, namely, cardinal, ordinal, and multiplicative: each kind running on in a series indefinitely.
From The Grammar of English Grammars by Brown, Goold
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.
