Additive

How to spell additive

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce additive

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does additive mean?

1. nounA substance added to something in small amounts to preserve it, improve it, or change a property.
2. adjectiveCharacterized by or produced through addition, where parts combine by being added together.

Additive in a sentence

• noun

  The label warns that the sauce contains a colour additive.

• adjective

  The printer uses an additive process, building each layer on the last.

• noun

  This fuel additive is meant to clean the engine over time.

• adjective

  The two effects are additive, so the totals simply combine.

Where does additive come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb addere, meaning 'to add' or 'to put to', which itself was formed from the prefix ad- 'to' and the verb dare 'to give'. From addere came the late Latin additivus, describing something that is added or that can be joined to a thing. English took it up first as an adjective in the seventeenth century, used in mathematics and logic for quantities that combine by addition, and only much later, in the twentieth century, did the noun sense flourish as factories began listing the substances mixed into food, fuel and other products. The same dare 'to give' root quietly sits inside many familiar relatives such as 'date', 'edition' and 'tradition'. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle vowel and the single d before -itive, since the doubled d belongs only at the front of the word.

How the word is built

• add- (from Latin addere: to add)
• -itive (adjective/noun suffix)