INTERPRETATIVE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does interpretative mean? 

• INTERPRETATIVE (adjective)
  The adjective INTERPRETATIVE has 1 sense:

1. that provides interpretation

  Familiarity information: INTERPRETATIVE used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INTERPRETATIVE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

That provides interpretation

Synonyms:

interpretative; interpretive

Similar:

informative; instructive (serving to instruct or enlighten or inform)

Derivation:

interpret (give an interpretation or explanation to)

interpret (give an interpretation or rendition of)

 Context examples 

Oh, I mean the real interpretative biology, from the ground up, from the laboratory and the test-tube and the vitalized inorganic right on up to the widest aesthetic and sociological generalizations.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I am too classical, not enough up-to-date in the interpretative branches of science, and I can only plead the disadvantages of my education and a temperamental slothfulness that prevents me from doing the work.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

In spite of their Unitarian proclivities and their masks of conservative broadmindedness, they were two generations behind interpretative science: their mental processes were mediaeval, while their thinking on the ultimate data of existence and of the universe struck him as the same metaphysical method that was as young as the youngest race, as old as the cave-man, and older—the same that moved the first Pleistocene ape-man to fear the dark; that moved the first hasty Hebrew savage to incarnate Eve from Adam's rib; that moved Descartes to build an idealistic system of the universe out of the projections of his own puny ego; and that moved the famous British ecclesiastic to denounce evolution in satire so scathing as to win immediate applause and leave his name a notorious scrawl on the page of history.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)