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What is "destructive"

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destructive
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
destructive
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
as
▪ And this can be as destructive to enjoyment and adventure as inflated claims or solemn incantations.
environmentally
▪ Although it is good to see the end of environmentally destructive quarrying, the landscaping seems a little excessive.
▪ But more competitive does not necessarily mean more environmentally destructive farming.
more
▪ The effect, enhanced in buildings and enclosed spaces, can be up to 16 times more destructive than conventional high explosives.
▪ They should be seen for what they are: symptoms of a larger and much more destructive phenomenon.&038;.
▪ Surely there could not have been a more destructive fire than Calvary; but more was to come.
▪ Nothing is more destructive to a partnership than for one partner to feel that he or she is being taken advantage of.
▪ Slanging matches rarely achieve anything positive, and other anger responses can be even more destructive.
▪ Could this be a prelude to a trade war even more destructive of world prosperity than a military war?
▪ It was far worse, more insidious, more destructive.
▪ Mr Brown said he really couldn't wish for a more destructive class.
most
▪ Arguably it was the last point that has proved most destructive of the international effort.
▪ The most unfortunate, the most destructive, and oftentimes the most stubbornly-fought conflicts are those of an intra-provincial or civil character.
▪ Sugar was one of the most destructive elements of the new diet.
▪ But it was the Chickasaw, commanded by George H.. Perkins, that fired the most destructive shots.
▪ The most destructive thing to do is to take complicated swing theory or swing movements on to the golf course.
▪ This emphasizes also his primitive appeal to fire as the most destructive force.
▪ Of all the reversals, though, the most destructive in the long run was the about-face of the Communist world.
▪ It was the most destructive that had been fought during the war, considering the length of time the engagement lasted.
potentially
▪ It is also a potentially destructive one.
▪ Competence addressed without concern for its potentially destructive possibilities is hardly preferable to a benign ineptitude.
▪ The interior, too, contains elements which are potentially destructive.
so
▪ Club members oppose electoral slates as these proved so destructive of the Tribune Group and Campaign Group.
▪ Why can't you do that, instead of being so ... so destructive.
very
▪ Like most of the true crabs they can be very destructive in the reef tank.
▪ Kim was also very destructive of any property not her own.
▪ Ballantyne's boys simply stare while one of Golding's boys is not appreciative and very destructive towards the tree.
■ NOUN
behaviour
▪ Teenagers often make inappropriate responses to conflicts such as aggression, withdrawing, sulking, tantrums or destructive behaviour.
force
▪ All that destructive force - and all of it directed towards her.
▪ The Titans introduced into the world of man the disruptive and destructive force of strife and killing.
▪ Conflicting views' Of course arable land in some places is going out of cultivation because of erosion and other destructive forces.
▪ This emphasizes also his primitive appeal to fire as the most destructive force.
▪ Fanning the flames of hatred on the street, on television or in the so-called intellectual press feeds destructive forces.
▪ This avenging boar, the agent of the insulted goddess, is henceforth identified with the destructive forces that produce tragedy.
▪ In addition they help conserve the existing soil structure by protecting the surface from the destructive force of winter rain.
▪ Civil wars were not the only destructive forces in the Merovingian kingdoms.
forces
▪ Conflicting views' Of course arable land in some places is going out of cultivation because of erosion and other destructive forces.
▪ Fanning the flames of hatred on the street, on television or in the so-called intellectual press feeds destructive forces.
▪ This avenging boar, the agent of the insulted goddess, is henceforth identified with the destructive forces that produce tragedy.
▪ Civil wars were not the only destructive forces in the Merovingian kingdoms.
power
▪ If multiple warheads are deployed, the different blast waves reinforce each other, increasing their destructive power.
▪ Their destructive power was enough to upset the whole economy of a strong and healthy country.
▪ But, given the destructive power of modern weapons, they did not believe that civilization could be protected by war.
▪ In later poems she is usually shown as treacherous and malicious, exerting a deadly and destructive power over men.
▪ It was seen as having both healing and destructive power.
▪ The neo-Confucians, by contrast, limited the scope of human destructive power to humanity itself.
▪ Her destructive powers are even greater than Ewan's!
process
▪ And now, on with the considerably more destructive process of deleting applications from Windows.
▪ The result is a gripping sense of guilt which locks victims into an even more destructive process of self-blaming.
▪ The problem solver pushes into the unknown intermediate region, alternatively employing constructive and destructive processes.
▪ This doesn't mean, I hasten to insist, that natural selection is a purely destructive process.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Alcoholics often tend to have stormy and destructive relationships.
▪ Jealousy is a very destructive emotion.
▪ Residents were awed by the earthquake's destructive force.
▪ The destructive side-effects of pesticides are now well known.
▪ The border war has been wasteful and destructive.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Cizek's method of criticism is constructive, never destructive.
▪ Clearly, people choose to act selfishly and in destructive ways despite the pain their actions will bring to others.
▪ It is impossibly complex, outrageously expensive, overly intrusive, economically destructive and manifestly unfair.
▪ It is the hiding that is destructive, not the pain.
▪ The potential for a destructive arms race is ever present.
▪ This is unfortunate, for such marriages are destructive to both partners.
▪ We ran up to the firing range one morning to try out our destructive techniques for real.
▪ Yet another effort to save the banks from the destructive effects of this river.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Destructive

Destructive \De*struc"tive\, a. [L. destructivus: cf. F. destructif.] Causing destruction; tending to bring about ruin, death, or devastation; ruinous; fatal; productive of serious evil; mischievous; pernicious; -- often with of or to; as, intemperance is destructive of health; evil examples are destructive to the morals of youth.

Time's destructive power.
--Wordsworth.

Destructive distillation. See Distillation.

Destructive sorties(Logic), a process of reasoning which involves the denial of the first of a series of dependent propositions as a consequence of the denial of the last; a species of reductio ad absurdum.
--Whately.

Syn: Mortal; deadly; poisonous; fatal; ruinous; malignant; baleful; pernicious; mischievous.

Destructive

Destructive \De*struc"tive\, n. One who destroys; a radical reformer; a destructionist.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
destructive

late 15c., from Old French destructif (14c.), from Late Latin destructivus, from destruct-, past participle stem of Latin destruere (see destroy).

Wiktionary
destructive

a. Causing destruction; damage.

Related phrases:
WordNet
destructive

adj. causing destruction or much damage; "a policy that is destructive to the economy"; "destructive criticism" [ant: constructive]

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Related phrases:

Usage examples of "destructive".

For Europe suffered its last destructive invasions from without during the Magyar raids of the ninth and tenth centuries -- the period of Almoravid penetration and conquest in the Western Sudan.

Though as brief as the Almoravid invasion of five centuries earlier, this Moroccan experience was hardly less destructive.

The appearance of the Socinians about 1550, and the mutual animosity of the several sects, including the Anabaptist, was destructive.

Core knew that the topography of the Void Which Binds could be modulated to transmit information instantaneously -- via the fatline -- but that this was a clumsy and destructive use of the medium of Planck space, rather like communicating across a continent by means of artificially produced earthquakes.

Destructive earthquake, accompanied by great landslides in the mountains and eruptions of water and mud in the region of northern Luzon which comprises the Provinces of the Ilocos, of Cagayan, and the Cordillera Central.

Manila and destructive in Cagayan and Isabela Provinces, northeastern Luzon.

This is why it occurs only in order to bring about the necessary passage from one to the other - either as a totality of destructive events alien to living beings and occurring only from outside them, or as a movement ceaselessly being outlined, then halted as soon as sketched, and perceptible only on the fringes of the table, in its unconsidered margins.

Such terrible explosives as trinitrotoluene occasionally mentioned in the published war reports, as well as many others, have as the principal agent of destructive force guncotton, which is ordinary raw cotton or cellulose treated with nitric or sulphuric acid, though there are, of course, other chemicals used in compounding the various forms of deadly explosives.

Christian benevolencethe tranquil heroism of endurance, the blameless purity, the contempt of guilty fame and of honors destructive to the human race, which, had they assumed the proud name of philosophy, would have been blazoned in his brightest words, because they own religion as their principlesink into narrow asceticism.

Destructive earthquake, causing notable damages, especially in the towns of the Provinces of Iloilo and Capiz.

After thinking on it a moment, he decided it would be better for the Kaliningrad to sink than for Novskoyy to let loose his incredibly destructive plan.

He could still make out the shapes of roads, city blocks, and parking lots, but they were green rectangles covered with mosses, lichens, and tough, destructive plants like buddleia.

The mine, big with destructive power, burst upon me, and hurled me high in the air--I fell on heaps of smoking limbs, but was only singed.

The Eco-theorists get so enraptured in their Manichaean good-versus-bad spirit that they paradoxically contribute to just those dualistic and destructive forces that at their best they, and all thoughtful men and women, do indeed wish to see superseded.

It was as though this whole Meadows empire which he had so carefully rebuilt out of the chaos was a castle of playing cards on a living-room rug, and John Tinker was a two-year-old playing in the same room, willful, destructive and unpredictable.