colligativeadj.

1820 T. Taylor tr. Proclus Comm. Plato II. iii. 80 These three,..viz. essence, sameness, and difference, are in each part of the soul, and it is requisite to conjoin all of them to each other through a medium and colligative reasons.

1845 A. Clissold tr. E. Swedenborg Principia I. ii. ii. 248 The circumstance of the magnet being able to turn the needle towards itself at a still greater distance..does not arise from the colligative and conjunctive force of the sphere.

1905 A. R. Sennett Garden Cities I. i. 8 Man is a colligative, a phalanxive being, and urban life attracts him.

1991 Jrnl. Aesthetic Educ. 25 68 The crux of the matter is that ‘culture’ is an open-textured, colligative concept.

2002 A. Davies Frog King 240 As for Horst, it just proves the sorry colligative truth of assistants in publishing: who cares who you are?

1890 J. Walker tr. F. W. Ostwald Outl. Gen. Chem. ii. iii. 58 Properties that always retain the same value for definite groups of substances, independent of the chemical nature and number of the atoms in these complexes, I have, at the suggestion of Professor Wundt, named colligative. The volume of gaseous substances, therefore, is such a colligative property.

1949 A. S. Crafts et al. Water in Physiol. Plants iii. 18 The concept of osmotic pressure..allows the properties of solutions to be treated like those of gases, particularly the quantitative relation between colligative properties and concentration.

1970 Science 22 May 945/1 These findings argue strongly against ascribing protection to colligative effects.

2003 R. Myers Basics of Chem. xi. 129 Molality is especially important in working with colligative properties such as boiling point elevation and freezing point depression.