that prescribes; giving directions or injunctions:
a prescriptive letter from an anxious father.
2.
depending on or arising from effective legal prescription, as a right or title established by a long unchallenged tenure.
Origin
1740-50;prescript + -ive, modeled on descriptive, etc.
Related forms
prescriptively, adverb
prescriptiveness, noun
nonprescriptive, adjective
Examples from the web for prescriptive
Hacker accepts the distinction linguists make between prescriptive and descriptive grammar.
In the common shorthand, linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive.
Moreover, the results are prescriptive with respect to when and how such strategies should be used.
At the time the bill was described as enabling rather than prescriptive.
For many, a season's color card is as prescriptive as it is predictive.
Its generosity to needy foreigners is similarly prescriptive.
Ideology is slowly becoming rigidly prescriptive and political transcendence is becoming less and less possible or admirable.
prescriptive exercise to boost metabolism and the immune system is a clear benefit.
Power is also a scholar who is descriptive rather than prescriptive.
Critics say that so mechanically prescriptive a system can bore students.
British Dictionary definitions for prescriptive
prescriptive
/prɪˈskrɪptɪv/
adjective
1.
making or giving directions, rules, or injunctions
2.
sanctioned by long-standing usage or custom
3.
derived from or based upon legal prescription: a prescriptive title
Derived Forms
prescriptively, adverb prescriptiveness, noun
Word Origin and History for prescriptive
adj.
1748, from Late Latin praescriptivus, from praescript-, past participle stem of praescribere (see prescription). Or formed in English from archaic prescript "a direction" (1530s), from Latin praescriptum.