Inventive

How to spell inventive

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce inventive

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does inventive mean?

1. adjectiveHaving or showing the ability to create or design new things or original ideas.

Inventive in a sentence

• The engineer found an inventive solution to the storage problem.

• Her inventive approach to the budget saved the department thousands.

Where does inventive come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb invenire, which literally meant 'to come upon' or 'to find', built from in- 'on, upon' and venire 'to come'. From the idea of coming upon something, the sense widened to mean discovering or devising, and the related noun inventio described both a discovery and the creative act of thinking something up. English borrowed the family through Old French in the late medieval period, and 'inventive' itself appears in the 1400s with the meaning 'skilled at devising new things'. The same venire root quietly powers a host of familiar words, including 'venture', 'convene', 'event', and of course 'invent' and 'invention'. Keeping that vent (come) core in mind helps fix the spelling, since the trap is the unstressed first syllable that can blur into 'en-'.

How the word is built

• in- (upon, on)
• vent (from Latin venire: to come)
• -ive (adjective suffix)