Adjective: productive
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more productive |
| Superlative | most productive |
Sample Sentences
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Moreover, this relationship is a productive one, in the sense that when new Adjectives are created (e.g. ginormous concocted out of gigantic and enormous), then the corresponding Adverb form (in this case ginormously) can also be used. And in those exceptional cases where Adverbs do not end in -ly, they generally have the same form as the corresponding Adjective, as with hard, fast, etc. [1988, Andrew Radford, Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 138:]
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In practice, a productive prefix yields many attested words (especially new coinages) without loss of meaning. For example, re- (“again”) is highly productive (rebuild, rethink), whereas other prefixes are relatively less so. [2026 April 26, Olha Matviyas, Victoria Rokoshevs’ka, Yulia Leshchyshyn, “THE MOST PRODUCTIVE PREFIXES IN ENGLISH MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY”, in The Future of Science, Technology and Economy, archived from the original on 08 Jul 2026, page 275:]
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a productive set
Adjectives inflected like productive
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
1. Etymology tree
2. Proto-Indo-European *per-der.?
3. Proto-Indo-European *per-der.?
4. Proto-Indo-European *pér
5. Proto-Indo-European *-o
6. Proto-Indo-European *pró
7. Proto-Indo-European *pro-
8. Proto-Italic *pro-
9. Latin prō-
10. Proto-Indo-European *dewk-
11. Proto-Indo-European *déwkti
12. Proto-Italic *doukō
13. Latin dūcō
14. Latin prōdūcō
15. Proto-Indo-European *-wós
16. Proto-Indo-European *-iHwósder.
17. Latin -īvus
18. Late Latin prōductīvusbor.
19. English productive
20. Borrowed from Late Latin productivus, equivalent to product + -ive.
Verbs referencing "productive"
Finnish Adjectives
produktiivinen.