inversiven.adj.

1683 G. Burnet Let. 14 Mar. in Autobiogr. & Lett. T. Comber (1947) II. 99 How the making out the Power of the Clergy in Elections can be anything but an Inversive against the present Constitution I do not see.

1931 Bull. School Oriental Stud. 6 709 ϝulolɑ, to unroll, is the inversive of ϝulɑ to roll up.

1948 H. P. Blok Swahili Anthol. I. 163 -fukia, to close, to fill in a hole, to bury... inversive: -fukua, to dig a hole, to dig up, to dig out, to excavate.

1998 S. Fitchat tr. M. Fisch Thimbukushu Gram. 127 In inversives, derived from verbs to denote an opposite meaning, the following variation is encountered in the forms of the suffix: [etc.].

2002 Anthropol. Linguistics 44 339 Dérespecter can be derived: from the noun dérespect..(as a denominal verb); from the verb respecter (as an inversive); and from the noun respect (as a privative).

a1765 W. Dunkin Select Poet. Wks. (1769) I. 251 To..defend their doors With keys inversive, with locks intricate Of wards.

1768 Gaz. & New Daily Advertiser 2 July It is unaccountably cruel in your correspondents to expect from you such publications, inversive of every good purpose.

1838 Introd. Princ. Morals & Legislation in Wks. J. Bentham i. ii. 4/2 The principle of asceticism..[is] like the principle of utility..; but in an inversive [previous eds. read inverse] manner: approving of actions in as far as they tend to diminish his happiness; disapproving of them in as far as they tend to augment it.

1862 Rep. Proc. Hartwell Peace & Temperance Festival 45 Every killing in war..is irrational and inhuman; being subversive of all right and inversive of all order, it is mischievous and indefensible.

1917 J. Hazelrigg Astrosophic Princ. 123 A revolution foreshadowed the reversal of the national sentiment... Uranus, so frequently inversive of the usual order of things, is in the 5th.

1925 Sewanee Rev. 33 166 Conrad's..inversive method..consists in transposing the natural order of incidents, so that they are presented..in non-chronological order.

2008 J. J. MacAloon This Great Symbol vi. 289 Athletic contests..are at once expressive and inversive of the modern cultural order.

1858 W. H. I. Bleek Libr. G. Grey: Philol. I. i. 166 The quality of the vowel of some inflexes forming inversive, the so-called relative.., and passive verbs is regularly determined by the nature of the preceding vowel.

1906 E. Jacottet Pract. Method to learn Sesuto 156 The suffixes oha, ohola, ola, [etc.].., form an inversive species, which indicates that the meaning of the root verb is reversed, as is the case with the English prefix un.

1986 Res. in Afr. Lit. 17 489 The use of the verb -umbuka (be disfigured, unattractive), the inversive form of the verb umbika (to be attractive), is revealing here.

2003 C. Lefebvre in G. Booij & J. Van Marle Yearbk. Morphol. 2002 72 The form de- is either inversive or privative [in Haitian creole].

1860 Pharmaceut. Jrnl. & Trans. July 22 These experiments having proved that the inversive action is really due to the yeast, I have been led to isolate the ferment which produces the inversion of cane sugar.

1880 Brit. Med. Jrnl. 10 Apr. 540/2 The inversive ferment of the small intestine has no action except on cane-sugar.

1930 H. W. Bywaters Mod. Methods Cocoa & Chocolate Manuf. vi. 65 Delay in dealing with the roots is attended with a slow inversive change in the beet, resulting in the production of the sugary substances, dextrose and levulose.

1907 F. Morley in Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 8 14 The present method heads for inversive geometry.

1941 Amer. Math. Monthly 48 592 The complex inversive plane..is connected with the essentially real plane of circular coördinates.

1971 Educ. Stud. Math. 3 319 Any two non-intersecting circles have an inversive distance, which is preserved when the circles are inverted into concentric circles.

2012 D. A. Brannan et al. Geometry (ed. 2) 3 There is a close connection between spherical geometry and inversive geometry.