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Definition of "demonstrative" []

  • Serving to manifest or prove. (adjective)
  • Involving or characterized by demonstration. (adjective)
  • Given to or marked by the open expression of emotion: an affectionate and demonstrative family. (adjective)
  • Grammar Specifying or singling out the person or thing referred to: the demonstrative pronouns these and that. (adjective)
  • Grammar A demonstrative pronoun or adjective. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "demonstrative" in a sentence
  • "Certainty depends so wholly on this intuition, that, in the next degree of knowledge which I call demonstrative, this intuition is necessary in all the connexions of the intermediate ideas, without which we cannot attain knowledge and certainty."
  • "The two sisters, with the most virtuous emulation, vied with each other in demonstrative affection, till he was tolerably consoled."
  • "Normally when I use the word demonstrative on my blog I use it very loosely, it is a word I happen to love and on the level that I have written about myself up until now the context in which I have I used it is always simply to mean that I am not an affectionate person."