The Collaborative International Dictionary
Discriminative \Dis*crim"i*na*tive\, a.
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Marking a difference; distinguishing; distinctive; characteristic.
That peculiar and discriminative form of life.
--Johnson. Observing distinctions; making differences; discriminating. ``Discriminative censure.''
--J. Foster. ``Discriminative Providence.''
--Dr. H. More.
Wiktionary
a. 1 which has the ability to discriminate between things; or which imparts such ability 2 (context of an element, feature, attribute, etc. English) which serves to distinguish its bearer
WordNet
adj. capable of making fine distinctions [syn: discriminatory]
expressing careful judgment; "discriminative censure"; "a biography ...appreciative and yet judicial in purpose"-Tyler Dennett [syn: judicial]
Usage examples of "discriminative".
Now the consciousness of ji hokkai cannot help being discriminative, and, experiencing oneself that way, one is bounded, like the light of a bulb, in this fragile present body of glass.
But what is most striking about the bloodhound and different from insects is the richness of its discriminative ability, its aptitude in distinguishing among many different smells, each in an immense background of other odors.
The most elaborate man-made device of this sort, the gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, has in general neither the sensitivity nor the discriminative ability of the bloodhound, although substantial progress is being made in this technology.
As there subsists no longer in the Islands much of that peculiar and discriminative form of life, of which the idea had delighted our imagination, we were willing to listen to such accounts of past times as would be given us.
The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice.