giving form or shape; forming; shaping; fashioning; molding:
a formative process in manufacturing.
2.
pertaining to formation or development:
a child's most formative years.
3.
Biology.
capable of developing new cells or tissue by cell division and differentiation:
formative tissue.
concerned with the formation of an embryo, organ, or the like.
4.
Grammar. pertaining to a formative.
noun
5.
Grammar. a derivational affix, particularly one that determines the part of speech of the derived word, as -ness, in loudness, hardness, etc.
6.
Linguistics. (in generative grammar) any element, as a word, affix, or inflectional ending, functioning as a minimal syntactic unit that can be used in forming larger constructions.
Origin
1480-90; < Middle Frenchformatif. See formation, -ive