consumptive

1. 1.

   tending to consume or use often wastefully

   “water suitable for beneficial consumptive uses”

   “duties consumptive of time and energy”

   “consumptive fires”

   Antonymsgenerative

   Similarexploitative
2. 2.

   afflicted with or associated with pulmonary tuberculosis

   “a consumptive patient”

   “a consumptive cough”

   Similarill

1. 1.

   a person with pulmonary tuberculosis

   Synonymslungertubercular

   Broadersick person

Other forms of consumptive

plural

consumptives·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about consumptive

What does consumptive mean?

consumptive means "tending to consume or use often wastefully". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in consumptive?

consumptive has 3 syllables: con-sump-tive. The stress falls on "con".

What is another word for consumptive?

Close synonyms include lunger, tubercular. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

What is the opposite of consumptive?

The recorded antonyms are generative.

Is consumptive a common word?

consumptive is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.