ameliorative

English

Etymology

From ameliorate +‎ -ive.

Adjective

ameliorative (comparative more ameliorative, superlative most ameliorative)

1. Able to repair or ameliorate.
2. (linguistics) Suggesting or relating to a positive or approving evaluation.
   • 2016, Olga Panić Kavgić, “Linguistic Creativity at Work: Nicknames of Women Tennis Players”, in English Studies Today‎^[1], archived from the original on 20 August 2018:

     […] personal nicknames can generally be divided into positively marked (ameliorative) ones, usually given by family members and friends as a sign of affection and acceptance, and those negatively marked (pejorative or derogatory), whose aim is to mock or ridicule a person […]

3. (philosophy) Of or relating to conceptual engineering, the normative study of which conceptual demarcation is most conducive to solve the problems the concept is a priori taken to solve.

   ameliorative inquiry

   ameliorative analysis

   ameliorative project

Antonyms

• (antonym(s) of “positive evaluation”): pejorative, derogatory

Hypernyms

• (positive evaluation): evaluative

Derived terms

• ameliorative waste

Related terms

• amelioration

Translations

able to repair or ameliorate

• Finnish: parantava (fi) (transitive), parantuva (fi) (intransitive), korjaava (fi) (transitive), korjautuva (intransitive)
• German: verbessernd (de), bessernd (de)
• Polish: polepszający, amelioracyjny

(philosophy)

• Finnish: amelioratiivinen
• German: ameliorativ
• Polish: amelioracyjny

Noun

ameliorative (plural amelioratives)

1. That which betters or improves.
   • 1973, Alan Gartner, Public service employment, page 106:

     With such conventional Keynesian amelioratives, the economy normally recovers with output and employment on the rise, and, unfortunately, with inflation picking up too.

   • 1944, Charles Smith, An Economic Plan for Democracy, page 3:

     It certainly means the stripping from Parliament of endless debates on niggling parsimonies and trivial amelioratives; the thousand and one unreal fights and distractions which has kept democracy from winning the other half of freedom.

2. (linguistics, rare) A linguistic unit (such as a word, morpheme) that implies a positive or approving evaluation.

   Antonym: pejorative

   • 2015, Nicola Grandi, Edinburgh Handbook of Evaluative Morphology, page 4:

     Moreover, diminutives, augmentatives, pejoratives and amelioratives have always been analysed as independent categories, neglecting the possible interrelations among them.