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Giving form; having the power of giving form; plastic; as, the formative arts. The meanest plant can not be raised without seed, by any formative residing in the soil. Bentley.

An affix.

Having power to inform, animate, or vivify. Dr. H. More.

A formative letter at the beginning of a word. M. Stuart.

Forming again; having the quality of renewing form; reformatory. Good.

Having power, or a tendency, to transform.

erned in the development and formation of blood vessels and blood corpuscles; as, the vasoformative cells.

the French; as, alteration, visitation; and many are formed on verbs ending in the Greek formative -ize (Fr. -ise); as, civilization, demoralization.

A tiny mass of bioplasm, in itself a living unit and having formative power, as a living white blood corpuscle; bioblast.

A suffix or terminal formative, used principally in biological terms, and signifying growth, formation; as, bioblast, epiblast, mesoblast, etc.

A series of formative cells lying outside of the wood proper and inside of the inner bark. The growth of new wood takes place in the cambium, which is very soft.

hich make the conception or the thing conceived to be what it is; or the idea viewed as a formative principle and coöperating with the matter. -- Material cause, that of which anything is made. -- Proximate cause. See under Proximate. -- To make common cause with, to join with in purposes and aims. Macaulay.…

Creative; formative. [R.] Mrs. Browning.

Pertaining to a demiurge; formative; creative. "Demiurgic power." De Quincey.

A suffix or terminal formative, much used in anatomical terms, and signifying skin, integument, covering; as, blastoderm, ectoderm, etc.

The primitive formative juice, from which the tissues, particularly the cellular tissue, are formed.

Shaped into one; tending to, or formative into, unity. [R.] Coleridge.

lled essential or substantial form, and contradistinguished from matter; hence, active or formative nature; law of being or activity; subjectively viewed, an idea; objectively, a law.

Blood formative; -- applied to a substance in early fetal life, which breaks up gradually into blood vessels.

Tending to excess of formative action.