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inventive

UK/ɪnˈvɛntɪv/US/ɪnˈvɛntɪv/
adjectiveB2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,669 of 15,258neutral

Inventive means good at thinking up new things. An inventive cook, inventive solutions, highly inventive.

In patent law there is an inventive step, meaning the idea must not be obvious to somebody skilled in the field — and that word obvious does an enormous amount of work in court. In ordinary use it is warm praise for resourcefulness.

Experimenter Publishing · Public domain

Definitions of inventive

  1. 1adjectiveinventiveGood at thinking up new things.B2

    “The inventive children built a working boat out of plastic bottles.”

inventive is a quality of creativity.

Where it comes from

Medieval Latin inventivus comes from invenire, to come upon or find — in plus venire, to come.

  1. Medieval Latin

    inventivus

  2. Old French

    inventif

  3. Middle English

    inventif

  4. English, today

    inventive

From Middle English inventif, inventyfe, borrowed from Old French inventif, borrowed from Medieval Latin inventivus. by surface analysis, invent + -ive.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Word Building

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inventive in the wild

  • In English, TRIZ is typically rendered as the theory of inventive problem solving.

    TRIZ

  • The lunettes in the structure of the Sistine Chapel ceiling inspired Michelangelo to come up with inventive compositions for the spaces.

    Lunette

  • Under older U.S. case law, an inventor is the one with "intellectual domination" over the inventive process and not merely one who assists in its reduction to practice.

    Inventor (patent)

  • Under the European Patent Convention (EPC), European patents shall be granted for inventions which among other things involve an inventive step.

    Inventive step under the European Patent Convention

  • The central legal provision explaining what this means, i.e. the central legal provision relating to the inventive step under the EPC, is Article 56 EPC.

    Inventive step under the European Patent Convention

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the inventif family

inventive

inventive — used about once every 3,740 pages · #8,669 · point at the bar for the others

  • invent
  • inventor
  • reinvent
  • invention