Crossword clues for retentive
retentive
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Retentive \Re*ten"tive\, a. [Cf. F. r['e]tentif.] Having power to retain; as, a retentive memory.
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit.
--Shak.
Retentive \Re*ten"tive\, n.
That which retains or confines; a restraint. [R.]
--Bp. Hall.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
late 14c., "able to hold or keep" (mental or physical), from Old French retentif, from Medieval Latin retentivus, from past participle stem of Latin retinere (see retain). Related: Retentively; retentiveness.
Wiktionary
a. 1 Having power to retain; as, a retentive memory. 2 (context slang, apocope English) anal-retentive n. (context obsolete English) That which retains or confines; a restraint.
WordNet
adj. tending to retain; "a retentive memory"; "soils retentive of moisture" [ant: unretentive]
Usage examples of "retentive".
Among these reliefs were fabulous monsters of abhorrent grotesqueness and malignity--half ichthyic and half batrachian in suggestion--which one could not dissociate from a certain haunting and uncomfortable sense of pseudomemory, as if they called up some image from deep cells and tissues whose retentive functions are wholly primal and awesomely ancestral.
Even they, lowest of the low, incapable or unwilling to go against the formidable odds when attempting to produce High Art, understood that Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The 400 Blows and La Str ada and King Kong-- by chance or intent -- transcended the callow commercial goals set by the secret cabal of Schlock Entrepreneurs and Anal Retentive Intellectuals.
A crop of corn on undrained, retentive ground, is subject to injury from disastrous changes of the weather, from planting until harvest.
But good crops of alfalfa may be grown on subsoils so retentive that underdrainage is necessary to facilitate the escape of an excess of moisture with sufficient quickness.
Brother Stevens himself, ventured upon the use of sundry grave saws from the holy volume, the fruit of early reading and a retentive memory, which not a little helped to maintain his novel pretensions in the mind of the brethren, and the worthy teacher, John Cross himself.
By my retentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was much struck with a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi.
How can someone so anal retentive look so good in a pair of jeans?
Your son is anal retentive, obsessive-compulsive, orally fixated, regressive -- a potential ding-dong.
Only some anal retentive type such as Professor Landreth would make a stink about it.
In Reynaud's humble opinion, most people who went into the Navy tended to be on the anal retentive side (ACS personnel were civil servants, not military—.
In Reynaud's humble opinion, most people who went into the Navy tended to be on the anal retentive side (ACS personnel were civil servants, not militaryand proud of itdespite their uniforms and rank insignia), and they were especially retentive about toys like their FTL com.
This is a process roughly equivalent to teaching a young child but with the advantage that the brain has the learning capacity of an exceptionally intelligent adult plus a perfectly retentive memory and a perception so fast that all visual and audial material, such as sound films, can be given to it at several times normal speed.
I'd hoped Carteret, with his oft-proven retentive memory, would come out snapping with answers.
Tempe was not expert enough in computer architecture to be certain that a machine so quick, intelligent, and retentive did not have a trace of personal identity.
It was a crude method but it required no instruments other than a retentive memory and a picturesque imagination, and the farmboys had those in plenty.