Dictionary

arrestive en · ADJ

Etymology

From arrest + -ive.

Meanings

1. Tending to arrest. ▸ Tending to stop or slow a process.
   • Some [emotions] are Instigative, and others Arrestive. 1850, James McCosh, The Method of the Divine Government, New York: Robert Caster, published 1851, Book 3, Chapter 3, p. 422:
   • This reactive recoiling from something clearly in our nature is itself unnatural. It is as arrestive of emotional progress as the opposite practice of uncontrolled indulgence, which is a symptom, not a cause, of emotional immaturity. 1973, Hugh Downs, chapter 11, in Potential: The Way to Emotional Maturity, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, page 188:
   • […] most periodontal therapy aims to prevent the initiation, progression, or recurrence of periodontal diseases. This can be termed arrestive periodontal therapy. 2006, Mea A. Weinberg et al., chapter 21, in Comprehensive Periodontics for the Dental Hygienist, 2nd edition, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, page 315:
2. (dated) Tending to arrest. ▸ Tending to capture people’s attention.
   • As fast they pressed with laboring breath, Clinched teeth and knitted frown, The sharp, arrestive cry rang out,— “The color-bearer’s down!” 1870, Margaret Junkin Preston, “The Color-Bearer”, in Old Song and New, Philadelphia: Lippincott, p. ,144:
   • First, the reader notices in an O. Henry story the quiet but arrestive beginning. 1916, C. Alphonso Smith, chapter 1, in O. Henry Biography, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, page 3:
   • I noted a curious streak of yellow in the silvered eyebrows, as if youth clung on, so to speak, by a single hair, and underneath these arrestive eyebrows green pupils alternately glowed and smouldered. 1899, Israel Zangwill, “Bethulah”, in They That Walk in Darkness: Ghetto Tragedies, Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, pages 198–199:

Forms

Deriveds

arrestively · arrestiveness

Synonyms

striking · captivating · arresting · remarkable · conspicuous