Attractive

How to spell attractive

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce attractive

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does attractive mean?

1. adjectivePleasing or appealing to look at, or interesting enough to draw attention.

Attractive in a sentence

• The renovated kitchen made the house far more attractive to buyers.

• The bank offered an attractive interest rate to new savers.

Where does attractive come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb attrahere, meaning 'to draw toward', formed from ad- 'to, toward' and trahere 'to draw or pull'. The same trahere root, glossed as 'to pull', also gives English tractor, traction, and extract, all of which carry that sense of dragging or drawing something. The medieval Latin form attractivus described something with the power to draw things in, and the word arrived in English through Old French attractif during the late 1300s. At first it kept a strongly literal, almost physical sense, used of forces and magnets that pull objects together, before broadening to mean anything that pleasingly draws the eye or the interest. The doubled t in the spelling is a clue to its origin: the prefix ad- assimilated to the t of the root, so 'ad-tract' became 'attract', which is the trap to remember.

How the word is built

• at- (form of ad-: to, toward)
• tract (from trahere: to draw, pull)
• -ive (adjective suffix)