Instructive means teaching you something worth knowing. An instructive example, instructive to compare, highly instructive.
It is often used with a dry edge, since saying that a comparison is instructive is a way of letting the reader draw the conclusion themselves. It is praise for what something reveals rather than for what it intended.
1adjectiveinstructiveTeaching you something worth knowing.
“The museum visit was both fun and instructive for the whole class.”
instructive is a quality.
Proto-Indo-European
*strew-
Latin
īnstrūctus
English
instruct
English, today
instructive
Built from
From instruct + -ive. instruct comes from Latin īnstrūctus, perfect passive participle of īnstruō (“I instruct; I arrange, furnish, or provide”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA