An impulsive person acts on the feeling of the moment, before the thinking catches up. Buying the coat in the window, walking out of a job in the middle of an argument, sending a message at two in the morning.
The noun behind it is impulse, a sudden urge, and it turns up wherever the adjective does: on impulse, an impulse buy, she resisted the impulse to answer. Impulsive describes a habit more than a single act, and it is mild criticism — the impulsive one in the family is the one who worries everybody. Do not treat it as a synonym for spontaneous. Spontaneous means unplanned and it sounds like fun; impulsive means unthought-out and it sounds like a bill arriving later. In physics and medicine an impulse is a short sharp force or a nerve signal, and impulsive there means nothing more than sudden.
1adjectiverashActing on sudden feeling, without thinking about what follows.
“He is too impulsive to be trusted with the budget.”
2adjectivedoneOf an act, done on a sudden urge rather than a plan.
“It was an impulsive decision and she never regretted it.”
3adjectiveimpulsiveIn technical use, acting as a sudden, short force.
“The blast puts an impulsive load on the whole wall.”
Also accepted in games: rash, spontaneous
The road is short: Latin impulsivus into Middle French impulsif, and out the other side as English impulsive. The word impulse sits visibly inside it, and that is exactly what it names — the push that arrives before the thought.
Latin
impulsivus
Middle French
impulsif
English, today
impulsive
Borrowed from Middle French impulsif, from Latin impulsivus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sharper Adjectives, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 32 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word