agentive
/əˈd͡ʒɛntɪv/adjective, noun
agentive is an adjective meaning “Indicating an agent or agency (as -er in lexicographer)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled A-G-E-N-T-I-V-E, and it appears about once in every 47 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does agentive mean?
adjective
- 1
Indicating an agent or agency (as -er in lexicographer).
- 2
Pertaining to a grammatical agent that performs the action of the verb.
noun
- 1
A word having an agentive construction.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce agentive?
- /əˈd͡ʒɛntɪv/
- /ˈeɪd͡ʒəntɪv/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of agentive
- agentives plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is agentive?
Agentive appears about once in every 47 million words in written English, the 211,986th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Agentive in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense indicating an agent:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does agentive come from?
From agent + -ive.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).