RETENTIVE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does retentive mean? 

• RETENTIVE (adjective)
  The adjective RETENTIVE has 3 senses:

1. good at remembering

2. having the capacity to retain something

3. having the power, capacity, or quality of retaining water

  Familiarity information: RETENTIVE used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• RETENTIVE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Good at remembering

Synonyms:

long; recollective; retentive; tenacious

Context example:

tenacious memory

Also:

aware; mindful (bearing in mind; attentive to)

Antonym:

unretentive ((of memory) deficient in retentiveness or range)

Derivation:

retain (keep in one's mind)

retain (hold back within)

retentiveness; retentivity (the power of retaining and recalling past experience)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Having the capacity to retain something

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Pertainym:

retention (the act of retaining something)

Derivation:

retentiveness (the property of retaining possessions that have been acquired)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Having the power, capacity, or quality of retaining water

Context example:

soils retentive of moisture

Similar:

impermeable (preventing especially liquids to pass or diffuse through)

Derivation:

retentiveness; retentivity (the power of retaining liquid)

 Context examples 

Alas! with all her reasoning, she found, that to retentive feelings eight years may be little more than nothing.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

The buccal environment is well supplied with both vascular and lymphatic drainage and is well suited for a retentive device.

(Buccal Route of Administration, NCI Thesaurus)

The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control!

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

It was a great consolation that Mr. Elton should not be really in love with her, or so particularly amiable as to make it shocking to disappoint him—that Harriet's nature should not be of that superior sort in which the feelings are most acute and retentive—and that there could be no necessity for any body's knowing what had passed except the three principals, and especially for her father's being given a moment's uneasiness about it.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)