elative

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɪˈleɪtɪv/
• Rhymes: -eɪtɪv

From Latin ēlātus (“exalted, lofty, high”) +‎ -ive. Possibly borrowed from German, which has produced a great deal of pioneering Semitist literature, and where Elativ is a common term for absolute superlative in all languages.

elative (plural elatives)

1. In Semitic languages, the “adjective degree of superiority.” In some languages such as Arabic, the concepts of comparative and superlative degree of an adjective are merged into a single form, the elative. How this form is understood or translated depends upon context and definiteness. In the absence of comparison, the elative conveys the notion of “greatest”, “supreme.”

   The elative of كَبِير (kabīr, “big”) is أَكْبَر (ʔakbar, “bigger/biggest, greater/greatest”).

elative (not comparable)

1. (rare) Exalted; feeling elation.
   • 1595, Thomas Lodge, A fig for Momus:

     And so the fleas, and flies in their degree, / By their attracted moyst humiditie, / Drawne from a certaine vertue elatiue, / Whence raine his generation doth deriue: / Seeke more than their accustom'd nutriment.

   • 1838, James Struthers, Poetic Tales, page 125:

     Thither shall gratitude's feelings elative wend, / Bath'd in the dew of the soul's lofty swelling.

   • 1910 May, David Henderson, “The Diagnosis of Brain Syphilis”, in State Hospital Bullitens, volume III, number 1, [New York] State Commission in Lunacy:

     The first case is that of E. M., 37 years of age, laborer, who on admission was elative, over-talkative, had a well marked feeling of well being.

   • 1984, Richard Taylor, Good and Evil: A New Direction: a Forceful Attack on the Rationalistic Tradition in Ethics, page 242:

     whereas if one thinks instead that it is inflicted by others, then the elative feeling is one of masochism, which is quite rightly deemed a disease.

(Can this⁽⁺⁾ etymology be sourced?) From Latin ēlātus, perfect past participle of efferō (“I carry out or away”)

elative (plural elatives)

1. (grammar) In Finno-Ugric languages, one of the locative cases, expressing “out of,” or “from” as in Finnish talosta, Hungarian házból (“out of the house”). Its opposite is the illative case (“into”). In Finnish, the case form is used also to express "out of" or "proximity" in a figurative sense which in English is often conveyed by the word "about".

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