capacitive
Americanadjective
-
pertaining to electrical capacitance, or the property of being able to collect and hold a charge of electricity.
-
exhibiting or relying on electrical capacitance.
smartphones with capacitive touchscreens that react to electrical impulses generated by your finger.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of capacitive
First recorded in 1915–20; capacit(y) + -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.
Neither did Mazda abandon conventional switches, rotary knobs and paddles even as other companies were converting to capacitive and haptic controls.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 27, 2026
The sample head measures the thermal Hall effect using capacitive thermometry.
From Science Daily • Jan. 17, 2024
It has a row of capacitive touch buttons that are used for climate controls but can completely change to stereo controls at the press of a specific button.
From Seattle Times • Sep. 21, 2022
It’s got built-in battery contacts, a USB port for programming instead of the old serial debugging pins, and capacitive touch hardware baked into the board itself.
From The Verge • Aug. 20, 2022
The combined effect of resistance R , inductive reactance XL , and capacitive reactance XC is defined to be impedance, an AC analogue to resistance in a DC circuit.
From Textbooks • Aug. 12, 2015
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.
