distinctive, a. (n.)
(dɪˈstɪŋktɪv)
[f. L. distinct- ppl. stem of distinguĕre (see distinct, distinguish) + -ive; cf. F. distinctif, -ive (1740 in Acad.).]
A. adj.
1. a. Having the quality of distinguishing; serving or used to distinguish or discriminate; characteristic, distinguishing.
| 1583 Stubbes Anat. Abus. i. (1879) 73 Our Apparell was giuen vs as a signe distinctiue, to discern betwixt sex and sex. 1627–77 Feltham Resolves ii. lvii. 278 'Tis one of the distinctive properties of Man from Beast, that he can reflect upon himself. 1828 D'Israeli Chas. I, I. vi. 156 Papist and Protestant now became distinctive names. 1856 Ruskin Mod. Paint. III. iv. xvii. §9 Wordsworth's distinctive work was a war with pomp and pretence, and a display of the majesty of simple feelings and humble hearts. 1878 Gladstone Prim. Homer 9 The..distinctive office of the bard was to give delight. 1894 C. N. Robinson Brit. Fleet 319 A military organization, wearing a distinctive dress. |
b. Applied spec. in Linguistics to a phonetic feature that is capable of distinguishing one meaning from another. Also distinctive-feature, applied attrib. to a theory or system propounded by R. Jakobson of classifying linguistic elements in terms of their distinctive phonetic features.
| 1927 Bloomfield & Bolling in Language III. 129 Normally we symbolize only phonemes (distinctive features) so far as we can determine them. 1933 Bloomfield Lang. v. 77 Part of the gross acoustic features are indifferent (non-distinctive), and only a part are connected with meanings and essential to communication (distinctive)... A feature that is distinctive in one language, may be non-distinctive in another language. 1942 Bloch & Trager Outl. Ling. Analysis 38 Divide all phonetic differences observable in the language into two kinds: distinctive differences or contracts, capable of distinguishing one meaning from another; and nondistinctive differences, never used for this purpose. 1952 R. Jakobson et al. Preliminaries to Speech Analysis 3 The distinctive features are the ultimate distinctive entities of language since no one of them can be broken down into smaller linguistic units. The distinctive features combined into one simultaneous bundle form a phoneme. 1964 Language XL. 221 A problem wide open for experimentation is the psycholinguistic validation of ‘distinctive-feature analysis’. 1965 Ibid. XLI. 168 A positional and articulatory distinctive-feature description has been more thoroughly exploited than any other in analyzing clusters. 1965 N. Chomsky Aspects of Theory of Syntax i. 55 Jakobsonian distinctive-feature theory. 1968 Chomsky & Halle Sound Pattern Eng. 64 We take ‘distinctive features’ to be the minimal elements of which phonetic, lexical, and phonological transcriptions are composed. |
2. Having the power of distinguishing or discriminating; discriminative; discerning. rare.
| 1646 Sir T. Browne Pseud. Ep. ii. iii. 75 More judicious and distinctive heads. 1646 Crashaw Poems 128 If with distinctive eye and mind you look. 1879 R. K. Douglas Confucianism iii. 72 He..shows himself..accomplished, distinctive, concentrative, and searching. |
3. Having a distinct character or position. rare.
| 1867 Smiles Huguenots Eng. xviii. (1880) 343 The refugees..at length ceased to exist as a distinctive people. 1877 J. C. Cox Ch. of Derbysh. II. 417 Bonsall..was not a distinctive manor at the time of the Domesday Survey. |
4. Hebrew Gram. Applied to accents used, instead of stops, to separate clauses.
| 1874 Davidson Hebr. Gram. (1892) 27 These are the main distinctive accents, and by stopping at them..the reader will do justice to the sense. |
B. n.
1. A distinguishing mark or quality; a characteristic.
| 1816 Keatinge Trav. (1817) I. 189 The red umbrella, the distinctive of royalty here. 1836 Card. Wiseman Sc. & Relig. I. iii. 173 An intermediate class, possessing, to a certain degree, the distinctives of the extremes. |
2. Hebrew Gram. A distinctive accent: see A. 4.
| 1874 Davidson Hebr. Gram. (1892) 27 A distinctive of less power than Zakeph is {Tdotbl}iphḥâ. 1887 Athenæum 17 Dec. 820/1 As considerable attention is paid to the [Hebrew] accents, the author should know that tiphca is not a minor distinctive, but one of the four kings or great distinctives. |