noun
adjective
Other Word Forms
- nonpreservative adjective
Etymology
Origin of preservative
1350–1400; Middle English (adj. and noun) < Middle French preservatif (adj.) < Medieval Latin praeservātīvus. See preserve, -ative
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.
Researchers compared samples collected with and without a preservative and found 98.75% agreement between results, showing that the preservative did not interfere with the test.
From Science Daily • Mar. 31, 2026
Costco’s famed $4.99 rotisserie chicken is under fire in a proposed class action lawsuit claiming that the big box warehouse falsely advertised that its birds were preservative free.
From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 28, 2026
More than 700,000 of those products contained at least one preservative.
From Science Daily • Jan. 9, 2026
The new panel made its first decision last week, voting to stop recommending a small number of flu vaccines that still contain the preservative thimerosal, something Kennedy wrote a book about in 2015.
From BBC • Jun. 30, 2025
The cant of the ship made for hard pushing, but under their combined effort, the spool slowly rumbled forward, crunching over blistered preservative paint and loosened metal deck plates.
From "Ship Breaker" by Paolo Bacigalupi
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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.