"costive" meaning in All languages combined

See costive on Wiktionary

Adjective [English]

IPA: /ˈkɒstɪv/ [UK], /ˈkɑstɪv/ [General-American] Audio: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-costive.wav [Southern-England] Forms: more costive [comparative], most costive [superlative]
Etymology: From Middle French costivé, past participle of costiver (“to constipate”), ultimately from Latin cōnstīpātus (“constipated”). Doublet of constipate. Etymology templates: {{der|en|frm|costivé}} Middle French costivé, {{cog|la|cōnstīpātus||constipated}} Latin cōnstīpātus (“constipated”), {{dbt|en|constipate}} Doublet of constipate Head templates: {{en-adj}} costive (comparative more costive, superlative most costive)
  1. Constipated.
    Sense id: en-costive-en-adj-3CO5vRuB Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 59 41 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 100 0 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 100 0
  2. (informal) Miserly, parsimonious. Tags: informal
    Sense id: en-costive-en-adj-zYX0HEkO
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Derived forms: costively, costiveness
{
  "derived": [
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "costively"
    },
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "costiveness"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_links": [
    [
      "costivé",
      "costivé#Middle_French"
    ],
    [
      "costiver",
      "costiver#Old_French"
    ],
    [
      "cōnstīpātus",
      "constipatus#Latin"
    ],
    [
      "constipate",
      "constipate#English"
    ]
  ],
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "frm",
        "3": "costivé"
      },
      "expansion": "Middle French costivé",
      "name": "der"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "la",
        "2": "cōnstīpātus",
        "3": "",
        "4": "constipated"
      },
      "expansion": "Latin cōnstīpātus (“constipated”)",
      "name": "cog"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "constipate"
      },
      "expansion": "Doublet of constipate",
      "name": "dbt"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From Middle French costivé, past participle of costiver (“to constipate”), ultimately from Latin cōnstīpātus (“constipated”). Doublet of constipate.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "more costive",
      "tags": [
        "comparative"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "most costive",
      "tags": [
        "superlative"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "costive (comparative more costive, superlative most costive)",
      "name": "en-adj"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adj",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "59 41",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "100 0",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "100 0",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              28,
              35
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "1607 (first performance), [Francis Beaumont], The Knight of the Burning Pestle, London: […] [Nicholas Okes] for Walter Burre, […], published 1613, →OCLC, Act V, signature K3, recto:",
          "text": "When I was mortall, this my costiue corps / Did lap vp Figs and Raisons in the Strand, / Where sitting I espi'd a louely Dame, / Whose maister wrought with Lingell and with All, / And vnder ground he vampied many a boote.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              294,
              301
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "1659, Laurence Sterne, chapter XXVIII, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman:",
          "text": "Is it fit——goodnatured man! thou should’st sit up, with the wound upon thy groin, whole nights baking thy blood with hectic watchings?——Alas! ’twill exasperate thy symptoms,—check thy perspirations—evaporate thy spirits—waste thy animal strength, dry up thy radical moisture, bring thee into a costive habit of body,——impair thy health,——and hasten all the infirmities of thy old age.—O my uncle! my uncle Toby.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              32,
              39
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2004, Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty […], 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 346:",
          "text": "Melanie, who was used to Wani's costive memos, and even to dressing up the gist of a letter in her own words, stuck out her tongue in concentration as she took down Nick's old-fashioned periods and perplexing semicolons.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Constipated."
      ],
      "id": "en-costive-en-adj-3CO5vRuB",
      "links": [
        [
          "Constipated",
          "constipated"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              198,
              205
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2006 July 1, Hugh Conlon, Nine Familiar Fables, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 73:",
          "text": "Well, the shoemaker and his wife, Louise, may have been poor, needy, indigent, destitute, impecunious and impoverished — at least before the elves came along — but they had never been parsimonious, costive, miserly, penny-pinching or stinting. They were far from being avaricious, rapacious, mean or greedy. The shoemaker was uxorious about his wife, Louise, but he had never been usurious, even when he had money to lend […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "text": "For quotations using this term, see Citations:costive."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Miserly, parsimonious."
      ],
      "id": "en-costive-en-adj-zYX0HEkO",
      "links": [
        [
          "Miserly",
          "miserly"
        ],
        [
          "parsimonious",
          "parsimonious"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal) Miserly, parsimonious."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈkɒstɪv/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-costive.wav",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/07/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-costive.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-costive.wav.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/07/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-costive.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-costive.wav.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Southern-England"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈkɑstɪv/",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "costive"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English adjectives",
    "English doublets",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English terms derived from Middle French",
    "Pages with 1 entry",
    "Pages with entries"
  ],
  "derived": [
    {
      "word": "costively"
    },
    {
      "word": "costiveness"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_links": [
    [
      "costivé",
      "costivé#Middle_French"
    ],
    [
      "costiver",
      "costiver#Old_French"
    ],
    [
      "cōnstīpātus",
      "constipatus#Latin"
    ],
    [
      "constipate",
      "constipate#English"
    ]
  ],
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "frm",
        "3": "costivé"
      },
      "expansion": "Middle French costivé",
      "name": "der"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "la",
        "2": "cōnstīpātus",
        "3": "",
        "4": "constipated"
      },
      "expansion": "Latin cōnstīpātus (“constipated”)",
      "name": "cog"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "constipate"
      },
      "expansion": "Doublet of constipate",
      "name": "dbt"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From Middle French costivé, past participle of costiver (“to constipate”), ultimately from Latin cōnstīpātus (“constipated”). Doublet of constipate.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "more costive",
      "tags": [
        "comparative"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "most costive",
      "tags": [
        "superlative"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "costive (comparative more costive, superlative most costive)",
      "name": "en-adj"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adj",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              28,
              35
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "1607 (first performance), [Francis Beaumont], The Knight of the Burning Pestle, London: […] [Nicholas Okes] for Walter Burre, […], published 1613, →OCLC, Act V, signature K3, recto:",
          "text": "When I was mortall, this my costiue corps / Did lap vp Figs and Raisons in the Strand, / Where sitting I espi'd a louely Dame, / Whose maister wrought with Lingell and with All, / And vnder ground he vampied many a boote.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              294,
              301
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "1659, Laurence Sterne, chapter XXVIII, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman:",
          "text": "Is it fit——goodnatured man! thou should’st sit up, with the wound upon thy groin, whole nights baking thy blood with hectic watchings?——Alas! ’twill exasperate thy symptoms,—check thy perspirations—evaporate thy spirits—waste thy animal strength, dry up thy radical moisture, bring thee into a costive habit of body,——impair thy health,——and hasten all the infirmities of thy old age.—O my uncle! my uncle Toby.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              32,
              39
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2004, Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty […], 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 346:",
          "text": "Melanie, who was used to Wani's costive memos, and even to dressing up the gist of a letter in her own words, stuck out her tongue in concentration as she took down Nick's old-fashioned periods and perplexing semicolons.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Constipated."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "Constipated",
          "constipated"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English informal terms",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              198,
              205
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2006 July 1, Hugh Conlon, Nine Familiar Fables, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 73:",
          "text": "Well, the shoemaker and his wife, Louise, may have been poor, needy, indigent, destitute, impecunious and impoverished — at least before the elves came along — but they had never been parsimonious, costive, miserly, penny-pinching or stinting. They were far from being avaricious, rapacious, mean or greedy. The shoemaker was uxorious about his wife, Louise, but he had never been usurious, even when he had money to lend […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "text": "For quotations using this term, see Citations:costive."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Miserly, parsimonious."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "Miserly",
          "miserly"
        ],
        [
          "parsimonious",
          "parsimonious"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal) Miserly, parsimonious."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈkɒstɪv/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-costive.wav",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/07/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-costive.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-costive.wav.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/07/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-costive.wav/LL-Q1860_%28eng%29-Vealhurl-costive.wav.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Southern-England"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈkɑstɪv/",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "costive"
}

Download raw JSONL data for costive meaning in All languages combined (4.3kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-09-25 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (1a05e46 and e3d6d4e). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.