Dictionaries › English

receptive

Pronunciation: /ɹɪˈsɛptɪv/

The English word “receptive” has 5 meanings listed here.

adjective

  1. Capable of receiving something.
  2. Ready to receive something, especially new concepts or ideas.
  3. Ready for reproduction; fertile.
  4. Of, affecting, or pertaining to the understanding of language rather than its expression.
  5. Of a female animal (especially a mammal): prepared to mate; in heat, in oestrus.

Etymology

From Late Middle English receptive, receptyue (“capable of receiving something; acting as a receptacle”), borrowed from Medieval Latin receptivus (“capable of receiving something”), from Latin receptus (“retaken, having been retaken; received, having been received”) + -īvus (suffix added to the perfect passive participial stems of verbs, forming a deverbal adjective meaning ‘doing; related to…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “receptive” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.