Normative

How to spell normative

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce normative

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does normative mean?

1. adjectiveEstablishing or relating to a standard or rule about how something should be done, rather than simply describing how it is.

Normative in a sentence

• The committee issued normative guidelines that every department was expected to follow.

• Economists distinguished their normative claims about what ought to happen from their factual predictions.

Where does normative come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin norma, which literally named a carpenter's square, the L-shaped tool used to check that a corner was a true right angle. Because that tool set the standard against which work was judged, norma came to mean a rule, a pattern, or a model to be followed. From it English already had 'norm' and 'normal', and in the nineteenth century scholars built 'normative' by adding the suffix -ative, which forms adjectives meaning 'tending towards' or 'concerned with'. The word entered academic English largely through French normatif and German use in philosophy and the social sciences, where it marks the contrast between describing how things are and prescribing how they ought to be. The single 'm' and the unstressed second syllable are the usual spelling traps, since the schwa offers no clue to the vowel.

How the word is built

• norm (standard, rule)
• -ative (adjective suffix: tending to or relating to)