adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a distinctive/striking appearance (=unusual and interesting)
▪ The unusual leaves give the plant a distinctive appearance.
a distinguishing/distinctive characteristic (=separating someone or something from others of the same type)
▪ The blue feathers are the distinguishing characteristic of the male bird.
distinctive
▪ Hops give beer its distinctive bitter taste.
distinctive/unique (=very different from other foods or drinks)
▪ Juniper berries give the drink its distinctive flavour.
distinctive/unmistakable
▪ Suddenly from below came the unmistakable sound of gunfire.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
highly
▪ There, each of the three species does have a very different and highly distinctive pattern of markings.
▪ There is thus no evidence to suggest that definition expansion may provide useful information when applied selectively to highly distinctive words.
▪ In other words, does the expansion of highly distinctive words result in a greater proportion of useful information?
more
▪ There is a growing band of buyers who want something more distinctive and who are prepared to pay extra for it.
▪ A skyscraper would obviously be more distinctive than a low bulky design.
▪ Corn oil is slightly heavier and more distinctive in flavour - I find it too heavy for salads.
▪ Of course, I am more easily identified and more distinctive, if not distinguished, than most authors.
most
▪ I argue along with T. J. Clark that Parisian modernism is most distinctive in terms of the disruptive force.
▪ The consequent leverage is the most distinctive feature of our financial era.
▪ The most distinctive land-mark in the parish is the Rimswell water tower, built in 1916 to serve South Holderness with water.
▪ Yet these ego-structures, although perhaps most distinctive of our species, did not appear whole, complete and without a past.
▪ However, financiers, merchants and bankers, such as the Rothschilds and the Barings, remained the most distinctive group.
▪ But the most distinctive feature is the fertilizer plant.
▪ And the most distinctive languages are often the most vulnerable - those of native peoples.
▪ The most distinctive institution of capitalist economies is the privately owned corporation.
quite
▪ Real diamonds have a quite distinctive, soapy texture to the surface and are immune from water.
▪ It had a big cairn of stones which made it quite distinctive.
▪ There are many overlaps between the approaches, though their specific orientations are quite distinctive.
▪ The station etiquette of the suburban commuter was quite distinctive.
▪ The policy traditions are again quite distinctive in other nations.
▪ Another, contemporary series of Gosol paintings is characterized by a gentle, pastoral mood that is quite distinctive.
so
▪ That's about ten pounds for every one of the wrinkles that makes them so distinctive.
▪ Individually, each was a stylist with a voice and approach so distinctive they could never be mistaken for anyone else.
▪ He had that elusive quality so distinctive of Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces.
▪ The Macintosh casing was so distinctive that its visual presence would become as recognizable as a Volkswagen bug.
▪ Anjou wines are so distinctive, that in 1920 a competition was held to design a glass to do them justice.
very
▪ He created very distinctive passages of ascending chords to accompany the magic bird's flight through the trees.
▪ Loganberries display a purplish dark red colon Their flavor is slightly tart and very distinctive, which makes them useful for winemaking.
▪ The elements selected from the confusion of conflicting movements have this different and very distinctive bias.
▪ Those in my tiresome generation who thought 25 years ago it was so very distinctive, so in, to swear.
▪ There ought to be something very distinctive about the theory that describes the universe.
▪ No prize-winner, perhaps, but a very distinctive Koi.
▪ The all black bottle was very distinctive.
▪ The adult male peregrine is a very distinctive bluey black in colour when seen from the rear.
■ NOUN
character
▪ The distinctive character of the drawing is determined by two quite independent principles.
▪ They evolved rapidly and spread widely, and have a range of distinctive characters to help the investigator in his identifications.
▪ Taken together, they conveyed a view of primary teaching which had a distinctive character.
▪ Such communities acquired their own distinctive character and many welcomed the Evangelical Revival with enthusiasm.
▪ It was the combination of large circulation share and a large number of titles that gave concentration its distinctive character in 1990.
▪ They were in effect an inferior kind of man, with no distinctive character of their own.
▪ What, finally, is the vital, dynamic core of the community that gives it its uniquely distinctive character?
characteristic
▪ There were three distinctive characteristics about the archosaurs that paleontologists discovered marked them off from their antecedents.
▪ During his lifetime, the distinctive characteristics of his vocation had begun to dwindle.
▪ These distinctive characteristics come from differences in minute quantities of flavouring constituents whose concentrations are at the threshold of human sensory perception.
▪ All madeiras are blended and the blender is an artist, giving the blend its distinctive characteristics.
▪ The three islands have distinctive characteristics with the best of the game fishing being on South Uist.
contribution
▪ At its most basic level, the railway station was the nineteenth century's distinctive contribution to architectural forms.
▪ It is at this stage Ministers must make their distinctive contribution.
▪ His distinctive contribution was to apply the conventions of estate and garden plans to county maps.
feature
▪ The distinctive feature of the method lies in what it does not do.
▪ The consequent leverage is the most distinctive feature of our financial era.
▪ And one of the distinctive features of life here has been a gradual loss of the ability to distinguish right from wrong.
▪ Ideally, of course, each type of music should he noted down according to a method that reflects its distinctive features.
▪ He can begin to analyse the distinctive features of communicative interactions while still using the language of the mentalist.
▪ Female and juvenile have no distinctive features, differing from Calandra and White-winged Larks in lack of white in wing.
▪ The eye-spotted dorsal fin is another distinctive feature.
▪ It is also an extremely distinctive feature in terms of its high level of geographical polarization.
flavour
▪ No brewer should ever be afraid of making beer with a distinctive flavour.
▪ To my taste, none of these have a particularly distinctive flavour, but the quality in texture is immediately obvious.
▪ Thanks to some very skilful hanging each of the four rooms used has a very distinctive flavour all its own.
▪ It has a distinctive flavour that blends well with pork.
form
▪ He argues that each form of kinship has its distinctive form of arrangements.
▪ Legislation now produced separate apparatuses and spheres of activity, with distinctive forms of knowledge and expertise.
▪ M'ARS specialise in a distinctive form of traditionalism, close to surrealism.
▪ In this tranquil setting stands the distinctive form of Holme Castle, an impressive Victorian stone house built in 1820.
nature
▪ Ability to care for the helpless is women's distinctive nature.
▪ The distinctive nature of Ends is further reinforced by the subsequent actions of club officials and police.
▪ The distinctive nature of this pattern was best illustrated in the coaches to away matches.
pattern
▪ There, each of the three species does have a very different and highly distinctive pattern of markings.
▪ The bicolor damsel, however, retains its distinctive pattern.
▪ There is much evidence that the fluctuation field involves distinctive patterns of motion.
▪ What mechanisms built the jaw's distinctive pattern, each tooth unique, the bone an asymmetric array of lumps and bumps?
▪ Its runways made a distinctive pattern, a slanting cross, as if some one had slammed a rubber stamp on the scruffy countryside.
▪ Bullock's report says companies that emerge from such university environments follow a distinctive pattern of development.
▪ All the troops in a regiment wear a uniform which has its own distinctive pattern or mix of colours.
quality
▪ Education is seen as a process of nurturing individuality, of fostering distinctive qualities that already reside within each individual.
shape
▪ All three are of type K. Ara has a fairly distinctive shape.
▪ Each variety is molded into distinctive shapes.
▪ There is no really distinctive shape, but there are two objects of special interest.
▪ And it's a very distinctive shape, which doesn't conform with anything in this room.
▪ Didymograptus species of this type have a distinctive shape like a tuning fork.
▪ Immatures best told from other large immature gulls by distinctive shape of bill, heavy and appearing to droop at tip.
▪ Micraster is sometimes called the heart urchin, because of its distinctive shape.
▪ Yet it is structure which gives to any undertaking its distinctive shape and identity.
sound
▪ When running it had a very distinctive sound which quickly earned it the name of Put-put or Phut-phut.
▪ In language the basic units are distinctive sounds and words.
▪ A horse uses a number of distinctive sounds to communicate verbally.
▪ Both pieces combine the distinctive sounds of the New World flute with the more familiar tones of Old World instruments.
style
▪ So an illustration may offer far wider possibilities for the art director to achieve special effects and a distinctive style.
▪ The photographs were praised for their individuality and for their many distinctive styles.
▪ Besides such large and expensive works, Stanton produced a considerable number of relatively simple mural tablets, in a distinctive style.
▪ The results are poles apart in terms of character ... each room has a distinctive style of its own.
▪ As a talker, Mrs Cruz had a distinctive style.
▪ Meanwhile private inter-war suburbia had its distinctive style where the semi-detached house was dominant.
▪ Sometimes, quite independent of this influence, certain rural estates continued to practise their own distinctive styles of building.
▪ They gave themselves away by their distinctive styles.
type
▪ They come up against our distinctive types of personal defence and weakness.
▪ Each distinctive type should be subject to a rigorous set of explicit rules of discipline.
▪ As early as 1848-9 a new and distinctive type of station had appeared.
voice
▪ Drifting out of an open window, riding over a choppy bassline, comes the distinctive voice of Omar.
▪ To Bowman, every actuator in the ship had its own distinctive voice, and he recognized this one instantly.
▪ She had a fairly distinctive voice - certainly none of the women I met around the office today.
▪ But a tracheotomy throat operation which helped to save his life may have changed his distinctive voice for ever.
▪ It was also feared an emergency tracheotomy could have ruined his distinctive voice for good.
▪ Pretty Samantha Mumba sounded like she has a distinctive voice.
way
▪ The group shares a distinctive way of life, knowledge, beliefs, codes, tastes and prejudices.
▪ Life-style refers to distinctive ways of living adopted by particular communities or sub-sections of society.
▪ They may also share distinctive ways of communicating, such as a repertoire of sayings and in- jokes.
▪ However, they do so in a distinctive way.
▪ This distinctive way of working and developing women's Art Magazine reflects the organisation's aims and ambitions as a whole.
▪ These brachiopods are preserved in a distinctive way.
▪ Selvedges are more or less the same on all items, but the fringes are secured in a number of distinctive ways.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ A black widow spider has a distinctive red hourglass marking on its stomach.
▪ Male birds have distinctive blue and yellow markings.
▪ The most distinctive feature of the building is its enormous dome-shaped roof.
▪ Whatever you think of Larkin's poetry, it's certainly distinctive.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A skyscraper would obviously be more distinctive than a low bulky design.
▪ It is a small species with a distinctive yellow stripe down its back.
▪ It was like a jazz class to some extent but with all the rather distinctive movements he had for his actual choreography.
▪ One particular strain lives only in the San Francisco Bay Area and gives the sourdough bread from that region its distinctive taste.
▪ The manufacturer makes products to match the retailer's specifications and these are labelled with the retailer's own distinctive label.
▪ The Provencale beef daube and the zucchini casserole, for instance, were decent but not distinctive.
▪ There is much evidence that the fluctuation field involves distinctive patterns of motion.
▪ These arrangements entrenched a distinctive land-owning pattern among the peasantry and perpetuated the peasantry's distance from other social estates.