Qualitative

How to spell qualitative

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce qualitative

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does qualitative mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the nature, character, or quality of something rather than to its measurable amount.

Qualitative in a sentence

• The report relied on qualitative interviews rather than hard numbers.

• A qualitative improvement in service is harder to measure than a rise in sales.

Where does qualitative come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin qualis, meaning 'of what kind' or 'what sort', a question word the Romans used to ask about the nature of a thing rather than its amount. From qualis the philosophers built the abstract noun qualitas, 'the kind or character of something', a term Cicero is credited with coining to translate Greek ideas about properties and attributes. Medieval Latin then formed qualitativus to describe anything relating to such qualities, and English took it up in the early 1600s, first in scholarly and scientific writing. From the start it sat in deliberate contrast with 'quantitative', which comes from the parallel Latin word for 'how much', quantus. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: writers hear a vague schwa and must remember the 'i' of quali- and the 'ta' that carries through from 'quality'.

How the word is built

• quali- (from Latin qualis: of what kind)
• -tat- (noun-forming, as in quality)
• -ive (adjective suffix)