elective

CEFRB2

/ɪˈlɛktɪv/

adjective · noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

Examples

At our high school, French is an elective.
After accounting for all of my required courses, there is hardly any room in my schedule for any elective ones.

At a glance

Sits at B2 on the CEFR scale

Deep Dive

Extra meanings

Open to choice; freely chosen; (also, usually) unnecessary; minor.
Scheduled and nonemergent (regardless of whether necessary or unnecessary and whether minor or serious).
Of, or pertaining to voting or elections; involving a choice between options.

In context

French is an elective.
1697, John Dryden, The Works of Virgil […] translated into English Verse, London: Jacob Tonson, dedicatory preface to the Marquess of Normanby, For his Conscience could not but whisper to the Arbitrary Monarch, that the Kings of Rome were at first Elective, a...
1896, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, “The South African Question” in Speeches and Writings of M. K. Gandhi, Madras: G.A. Natesan, 3rd edition, 1922, p. 6, [The bill] says that no natives of countries (not of European origin) which have not hitherto possessed ele...

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Question 1 · Quick check

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The word in print, with each source given in full.

Man thus endued with an elective voice, Must be supplied with objects of his choice.
1782, William Cowper, “The Progress of Error”, in Poems,, London: J. Johnson, page 43
[…] they rested their hopes of redress on the independent use of their elective franchise;
1854, George Bancroft, chapter 35, in History of the United States of America, from the Discovery of the American Continent,, volume 6, Boston: Little, Brown, page 185
See the populace, millions upon millions, handsome, tall, muscular, both sexes, clothed in easy and dignified clothes―teaching, commanding, marrying, generating, equally electing and elective;
1860, Walt Whitman, “Proto-Leaf”, in Leaves of Grass, Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, page 21
[…] his Lordship is deceived if he think any spontaneous action after once being checked in it, differs from an action voluntary and elective, for even the setting of a mans foot, in the posture for walking, and the action of ordinary eating was once deliberated of how and when it should be done, and though afterward it became easie & habitual so as to be done without fore-thought, yet that does not hinder but that the act is voluntary and proceedeth from election.
1654, Thomas Hobbes, Of Libertie and Necessitie, London: F. Eaglesfield, pages 12–13
[Her friends] are, after all, her elective siblings who have distanced themselves from the ways of the past, their families […]
2001, Nadine Gordimer, The Pickup, Toronto: Viking, page 23

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From elect + -ive.