contactive

English

Adjective

contactive

1. Involving or pertaining to direct physical contact.
   • 1845, Francis Fauvel-Gouraud, Phreno-mnemotechny: Or, The Art of Memory, page 40:

     Contactive memory, the recollection of the surfaces or forms which we have palped or handled .

   • 1853, Gabriel Gustav Valentin, A Text Book of Physiology, page 104:

     We may imagine, that traces of organic substances, mixed with the hydrocyanic acid, gradually decompose it by a contactive process; and that sulphuric acid hinders the process by charring these matters.

   • 1924, Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication - Volume 351, page 98:

     Mead's (14) "recommendations" for the control of the spread of the plague in England embodied all the essential principles of restriction of contactive diseases by measures directed to the control of persons and their immediate contactive environments in use at the present day.

   • 1996, S.V. Miroshnichenko, V.G. Synkov, “Strength of the High Pressure Chamber Made from Paramagnetic Materials”, in W Trzeciakowski, editor, High Pressure Science And Technology, page 39:

     To exclude secondary plasticity in the hardening layer while its pressing with internal one and during following loadings, the autofretting is realized in cyclic regime "loading-absolute unloading" and is finished at the stabilization of contactive stresses level on the mating surfaces (as a rule after 4 - 5 "loading-unloading" cycles)

2. (linguistics, syntax) Implying direct or physical contact.
   • 1982, George Melville Bolling, ‎Bernard Bloch, Language - Volume 58, page 827:

     Thus the proposed definition explains why the suffixes -aa and -vaa sometimes fail to signal the contrast between contactive and non-contactive causation.

   • 2002, Masayoshi Shibatani, The Grammar of Causation and Interpersonal Manipulation, page 11:

     This causation may be principally of two kinds, "distant" and "contactive".

   • 2006, John M. Anderson, Modern Grammars of Case, page 131:

     More generally, semantically absolutive normally marks an entity as participating as a whole in the situation identified by the verb, though not necessarily contactive, involving location.

   • 2016, Ronald P. Schaefer, ‎Francis O. Egbokhare, A Grammar of Emai, page 631:

     In series, re and direct object òè 'leg' join gbe to express contactive 'kick.'

3. (linguistics, of a speech act) Serving to initiate contact; introductory.
   • 1972, Henry F. Beechhold, ‎John L. Behling, The Science of Language and the Art of Teaching, page 27:

     Contactive language resembles ritual language in its formulistic character ( " How are you," "What's new?" etc. ) but differs in its tone and purpose.

   • 1983, John R. Bittner, Each Other: An Introduction to Interpersonal Communication, page 122:

     Slightly more complex than impulsive patterns are contactive patterns. Contactive patterns are most frequently used when we are attempting to initiate "contact" or gain the attention of another person.

   • 1991, Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts, page 1214:

     It is argued that the feature [contactive] differentiates invitations from other text types.

   • 1994, Jürgen E. Müller, Towards a Pragmatics of the Audiovisual: Theory and History, page 115:

     Similarly, overviews of the evening's program or of the program for the following day should be understood as part of the contactive dimension.

4. (physics, of sound) Produced by the contact of air with an object (such as the sound produced by blowing over the lip of a bottle), as opposed to being produced by vibrations on the part of an object.
   • 1843, Smith Bartlett Goodenow, An Essay on English Grammar, page 12:

     Articulate sounds, when made pulsative, are heard aloud; when made merely contactive, without vibration of the windpipe, they produce a whisper.

5. (statistics) Contiguous but not coordinated
   • 2018, Isidore Dyen, Linguistic Subgrouping and Lexicostatistics, page 73:

     In a complex distribution, if both of the contactive units are chains, there can be a reduction in the total of inferences only if one of the chains is in a simple distribution with a third chain and the interval is unoccupied.

Derived terms

• contactiveness