Formative means having a lasting effect on how somebody develops. Formative years, a formative experience, formative influences.
The formative years are usually meant as childhood and adolescence. In teaching it has a technical sense: formative assessment is marking done to guide the learner, as against summative assessment done to grade them.
1adjectiveformativeHaving a lasting effect on how somebody develops.
“Living abroad as a teenager was a formative experience that shaped her career.”
formative is a quality.
Medieval Latin formativus comes from formare, to shape, from forma, a shape.
Latin
fōrmātus
Medieval Latin
formātīvus
Old French
formatif
Middle English
formatyve
English, today
formative
Built from
From Middle English formatyve, formatif (“having the ability to form”), from Old French formatif, formative (modern French formatif), from Medieval Latin formātīvus, from Latin fōrmātus + -īvus. Fōrmātus is the perfect passive participle of fōrmō (“to form, to shape”), from fōrma (“a form, shape”); further etymology uncertain, possibly related to Ancient Greek μορφή (“a form, shape”) (see further at that entry). by surface analysis, form + -ative.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA