Legislative

How to spell legislative

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce legislative

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does legislative mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the making of laws or to the body that makes them.

Legislative in a sentence

• The new tax rules required legislative approval before taking effect.

• Reforming the pension system is a long legislative process.

Where does legislative come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word reaches back to the Latin noun lex, whose stem is leg-, meaning 'law', and the related verb legislare, 'to propose a law', which itself was assembled from legis latio, literally 'the carrying or proposing of a law'. The 'lat' element comes from latus, the past participle of ferre, 'to carry or bring forward', so a legislator is quite literally someone who brings a law forward. English picked the adjective up in the 1600s, partly through French and partly straight from the Latin scholarly vocabulary of government, to describe anything concerned with making laws. The same lex root survives in everyday relatives such as 'legal', 'legitimate' and 'legislature'. The spelling trap sits in the unstressed middle: writers hear 'lej-iss' but must remember the 'g' (from leg, law) and the 's' before the 'lat', giving the 'gisl' cluster that is easy to muddle.

How the word is built

• legis- (from Latin lex, legis: law)
• lat (from latus, carried/proposed)
• -ive (adjective suffix)