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say it: pree-ZUR-vuh-tiv
preservative is a noun and adjective meaning "a chemical compound that is added to protect against decay or decomposition". It carries 2 recorded senses.
tending or having the power to preserve
“timbers should be treated with a preservative substance”
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.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for preservative come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.