restrictive

CEFRB2

/ɹɪˈstɹɪktɪv/

adjective

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

01
adjective
Limiting freedom, movement, or what people are allowed to do.
02
adjective
Extra detail
A clause that narrows the meaning of a noun or noun phrase.

Examples

I find the concept of Globish restrictive and unreal.
This kind of restrictive legislation is bound to hobble the economy.

At a glance

Sits at B2 on the CEFR scale

Senses: 4
Parts of speech: 1
Citations: 5

Deep Dive

adjective

Extra meanings

limiting free and easy bodily movement.
Confining, limiting, containing within defined bounds.

More examples

In context

The help tended to be officious, the rules, if heeded, restrictive, and the management meddlesome.
The pinnacle of the effort to fix restrictive meanings to a set of terminology can be found in two papers in American Speech by Feinsilver (1979, 1980).
[…] a couple of further differences between restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses: (1) in contrast with restrictives, the wh-phrase in non-restrictives cannot be ellipted; […]

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The company's blank dress code required all employees to wear only black suits.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Citations

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

The help tended to be officious, the rules, if heeded, restrictive, and the management meddlesome.
1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Soldier in White”, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 168
The pinnacle of the effort to fix restrictive meanings to a set of terminology can be found in two papers in American Speech by Feinsilver (1979, 1980).
2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 7
RDG explains: "From April 1 2026, the following tickets, Anytime, Off-Peak, Day Travelcards and most Ranger and Rover tickets, will no longer be refundable on the day they become valid for travel." It calls the £40m it thinks it loses "refund abuse", which it explains as "refunds on tickets that have been used but not scanned or endorsed, where a customer falsely states that they did not travel". I'm sure such abuse takes place (and that it's done by passengers). But RDG is taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut and punishing many millions of honest passengers by making tickets more restrictive.
2026 March 18, Philip Haigh, “Tickets please: 2p per scan to offset fraudulent refunds?”, in RAIL, number 1057, page 48
Some of them [teenagers] who will become lesbians clearly are being hit with the same kind of garbage which we got hit with in the fifties. There's been a real resurgence of that in terms of values and double standards and music. The clothes again — we're back to high heels and restrictive little femmy outfits.
1980 December 6, Cindy Rizzo, Nancy Toder, “Jewish, Lesbian, Feminist, Psychologist, Author—All of the above and more”, in Gay Community News, volume 8, number 20, page 8
[…] a couple of further differences between restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses: (1) in contrast with restrictives, the wh-phrase in non-restrictives cannot be ellipted; […]
2013, Noel Burton-Roberts, Analysing Sentences, page 210

Keep restrictive

Looking a word up is the easy part. LexUp remembers which words you have met and brings them back at the point you were about to forget them.

Download on theApp Store Get it onGoogle Play

Origin

adjective

From Middle French restrictif. Morphologically restrict + -ive.

Deep Dive

adjective

More examples

Quick test

The company's blank— dress code required all employees to wear only black suits.

Nearby

Origin

adjective

The company's blank dress code required all employees to wear only black suits.