Quantitative

How to spell quantitative

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce quantitative

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does quantitative mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or measured by the amount or number of something rather than its quality.

Quantitative in a sentence

• The report relied on quantitative data drawn from thousands of survey responses.

• A quantitative analysis of sales figures revealed a steady decline over five years.

Where does quantitative come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin quantus, an adjective meaning literally 'how great' or 'how much', which gave rise to the noun quantitas, meaning 'amount' or 'extent'. Medieval Latin built the adjective quantitativus to describe anything relating to quantity rather than quality, and English adopted it in the late 1500s, chiefly in scholarly and scientific writing. From the start it was paired with its opposite, qualitative, the two words dividing the world neatly into matters of measurable amount and matters of character or kind. The same quantus root sits inside the everyday word 'quantity' and the slightly grander 'quantum', so the spelling traps cluster around the unstressed middle: the word keeps the full -tit- sequence (quan-ti-ta-tive), and writers often slip and drop a syllable to produce the non-standard 'quantitive'. Holding on to that extra -ta- in the middle is the key to spelling it correctly.

How the word is built

• quant- (from Latin quantus: how much)
• -it- (noun-forming, from quantitas: amount)
• -ative (adjective suffix)