Definition of "formative" []

• Forming or capable of forming. (adjective)
• Susceptible to transformation by growth and development. (adjective)
• Biology Capable of producing new cells or tissue. (adjective)
• Of or relating to formation, growth, or development: the formative stages of a plot. (adjective)
• Linguistics Relating to the formation or inflection of words. (adjective)

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.

• "What ` s keeping them watching is, in fact, what we call the formative features."
• "Coaching in formative years is vital and it is for this reason that I have believed fervently for years that our priorities in this regard have been wrong, the inverse of how it should be, where the best coaches (which does not necessarily mean the most qualified) concentrate on juniors in their early teens, when bodies, muscle memory and brains are receptive to change, rather than on older groups as a hierarchical thing."
• "Even though I have found it virtually impossible to 'change' somebodies morals after a certain formative period in their lives."