Adjective: proactive
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more proactive |
| Superlative | most proactive |
Sample Sentences
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We can deal with each problem as it pops up, or we can take a proactive stance and try to prevent future problems.
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Staff are also proactive in approaching any passengers looking as though they need assistance, rather than waiting to be approached. [2019 December 4, Andy Coward, “Derby's crowning achievement”, in Rail, page 56:]
Adjectives inflected like proactive
priest-ridden,
unreposed,
evadible,
dissentious,
dissentient,
unforesighted,
egocentrical,
unephemeral,
unennobling,
mensuralist,
flocculent,
unseductive,
whoopsy,
whooshy,
surrogate,
Nicodian,
unrepaired,
prismatoidal,
renorenal,
unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
From pro- + active; originally coined 1933 by Paul Whiteley and Gerald Blankfort in a psychology paper, used in technical sense. Used in a popular context and sense (courage, perseverance) in 1946 book Man’s Search for Meaning by neuropsychiatrist Viktor Emil Frankl, in the context of dealing with the Holocaust, as contrast with reactive.
Verbs referencing "proactive"
German Adjectives
proaktiv, Swedish Adjectives
proaktiv, Dutch Adjectives
proactief, Finnish Adjectives
proaktiivinen.