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View synonyms for reductive

reductive

[ ri-duhk-tiv ]

adjective

  1. of or relating to reduction; serving to reduce or abridge:

    an urgent need for reductive measures.

  2. of or relating to change from one form to another:

    reductive chemical processes.

  3. employing an analysis of a complex subject into a simplified, less detailed form; of, pertaining to, or employing reductionism; reductionistic.


noun

  1. something causing or inducing a reductive process.

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Other Words From

  • re·ductive·ly adverb
  • re·ductive·ness noun
  • anti·re·ductive adjective
  • nonre·ductive adjective

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Word History and Origins

Origin of reductive1

First recorded in 1625–35; reduct(ion) + -ive

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Example Sentences

Because it's too cautious to dramatize real problems and too reductive to tackle them realistically.

But it would be reductive to make that parallel a blanket one.

He had read a positive review of his own work that nonetheless struck him as reductive and inaccurate.

It is all too easy to be heavy-handed and reductive, something of which Freud himself was guilty on many occasions.

Eric Foner complains that Spielberg's Lincoln is unacceptably reductive.

Now that the law compels a list of dangerous drugs on the label, the cures proceed admittedly by a reductive principle.

At a boiling heat, in presence of dilute acids, it is split up, yielding a reductive sugar.

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reduction ratioreductivism