preventive

1. 1.

   preventing or contributing to the prevention of disease

   “preventive medicine”

   “vaccines are prophylactic”

   “a prophylactic drug”

   Synonymspreventativeprophylactic

   Similarhealthful
2. 2.

   tending to prevent or hinder

   Synonymspreventative

   Antonymspermissive

   Similarblockadingcloggingdeterrentfrustratingprecautionarypreclusivepreemptiveprohibitive

Other forms of preventive

plural

preventives·

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 preventive

What does preventive mean?

preventive means "remedy that prevents or slows the course of an illness or disease". That is the primary sense; the word has 5 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in preventive?

preventive has 3 syllables: pre-ven-tive. The stress falls on "ven". In IPA it is /pɹɪˈvɛntɪv/.

What is another word for preventive?

Close synonyms include preventative, prophylactic, hindrance, hinderance, hitch. 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 preventive?

The recorded antonyms are permissive.

Is preventive a common word?

preventive is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with preventive?

1 word rhymes with preventive. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.