Selective

How to spell selective

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce selective

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does selective mean?

1. adjectiveTending to choose carefully, or applying to only some people or things rather than all.

Selective in a sentence

• The university is highly selective about which applicants it admits.

• She is selective about the clients she takes on, preferring quality over volume.

Where does selective come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Selective comes from the Latin verb seligere, meaning 'to choose out' or 'to single out', formed from se- 'apart' and legere 'to gather, pick or read'. The past participle stem selct- gave the noun 'selection', and English then built the adjective 'selective' on that base, with the suffix -ive marking a tendency or quality. The word appears in English from the early 1600s, first describing the act of choosing carefully and later the modern sense of being choosy or applying things to only part of a group. The same legere root runs through a whole family of English words, including 'elect', 'collect' and even 'lecture', all of which involve gathering or picking out. Knowing the lect spelling at the core helps fix the awkward middle of the word, since the slip is almost always in that unstressed second syllable.

How the word is built

• se- (apart)
• lect (from legere: to choose, gather)
• -ive (adjective suffix)