productivepro‧duc‧tive /prəˈdʌktɪv/ ●●○ adjective 
Most of us are more productive in the morning. a highly productive meeting2[only before noun] relating to the production of goods, crops, or wealth: the economy’s productive capacity3productive of something formal causing or resulting in something: The meeting was productive of several good ideas.—productively adverb
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER DICTIONARIES
- Companies receive tax credits for buying productive equipment.
- Fertilizers make the land more productive.
- It was a very productive meeting.
- Studies show that if screen workers have short but frequent breaks they become much more productive.
- The local paper factory has been forced to become more productive or face closure.
- The most productive members of staff are rewarded by financial bonuses.
- We should do something to reward our most productive employees.
- A lot of otherwise productive time is being wasted debating the merits of each game.
- And the new order was to comprehend not only labour, not only working classes, but the productive classes.
- But feedback is always more productive than confrontations, and honesty is always better, and more instructive, than meaningless pleasantries.
- It also affects the productive potential of an economy.
- It has not been a productive summer for Viv Richards.
- It is competition which forces firms to adopt the most efficient productive techniques.
- Such saving is specifically used to increase productive capital and future profits.
- The device is expected to improve patients' quality of life by allowing them to remain active and productive.
Longman Language Activatorperson
someone who is efficient works well and does what needs to be done without wasting time: · For a successful business, friendly and efficient staff are essential.· The doctor was cheerful and efficient, which immediately made me feel more relaxed.
an efficient way of working: · I was impressed by her speed and efficiency.· The management seems to expect staff to be constantly achieving higher levels of efficiency and productivity.
someone who is effective , especially someone in a position of authority, deals quickly and successfully with the work they have to do: · An effective teacher will always produce better exam results.· What we need is a tough and effective leader with a sense of direction .
someone who is capable does things well and confidently and does not need anyone else's help or advice: · All the staff at the nursing home seemed very capable.· They've got a very capable lawyer working on the case.· Rebecca was, without question, the most capable technician on the team.
also well-organised British someone who is well-organized plans things well so that they achieve what they want to achieve: · If you work as a personal assistant, you need to be well-organized.· Well-organized rebel forces have succeeded in recapturing the town.
someone who is businesslike deals with people effectively and does not waste time on things that are not important: · As a lawyer, you have to be controlled and businesslike at all times.· Gates gave a brief, businesslike explanation of his plans for the company.
to manage a business or company very efficiently, especially by having strict rules and by not allowing the people working there to have much freedom: · We run a very tight ship here, and we expect all our employees to be at their desks by nine o'clock.
someone who is productive does a job efficiently and with good results, because they work faster than most people or do more work than most people: · Studies show that if screen workers have short but frequent breaks they become much more productive.· The most productive members of staff are rewarded by financial bonuses.
producing a lot doing a job efficiently with good results, especially by producing a large quantity of something: · We should do something to reward our most productive employees.· The local paper factory has been forced to become more productive or face closure.
a writer or artist who is prolific produces a large number of works: · Ansle is a prolific writer of more than 200 romances.· As an artist, Benton was prolific - more than 1,900 drawings were found in his studio after his death.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE ENTRY a highly productive meetingCOLLOCATIONS FROM THE CORPUSADVERB
a highly productive meeting· Organic farms can be as productive as industrial farming and do not damage the environment.· No agreement was reached, but both sides described the meeting as productive.· For John and me, this has meant curtailing even something as productive as organized sports involvement.· The home team was not quite as productive.
· Tokugawa agriculture was highly productive, and the amount levied in tax suggests that production was well above subsistence level.· At one time this was a highly productive dairy region-30 ranches-one of the biggest in the country.· And, work-wise, it proved to be a highly productive fortnight.· Longwall mining is a highly mechanized and highly productive method of underground mining.· The use of highly productive equipment means that bonus cut-off can be achieved with ease.· So one could go on to many other sociologists who have been highly productive during their careers.· As we move into a well-fed and highly productive era, new diseases transmitted through our food are regularly emerging.· This might be high if workers were scarce or highly productive and low if they were redundant or incompetent.
· Females are less productive than this and secondary females do particularly badly out of the system.· The organization has a less productive worker and the employee gets to wrestle with a series of physical and emotional problems.· In general, they tend to be regarded as less productive, less adaptable and less dynamic than younger workers.· Were they allowed to recover, the animals would be thinner and less productive.· An ageing population is both less productive and a more costly burden on the health services.· Education can make people more productive while health can only prevent them from becoming less productive.· Outmigration has led to severely unbalanced social structures in many areas, with an ageing and less productive population.
· They cut costs and became more productive.· It may be, in the long run, more productive to lose the battle but win the war.· Therefore, improvements in health can be achieved only if existing resources are re-allocated into policies more productive of health.· Everyone will be happier, and happier employees are more productive employees.· Two other sources are becoming more productive of new talent. one is lawyers and the other is accountants.· For the answer, we must turn to the factors that have made each labor hour more productive since the sixties.· In turn the rural regions become much more productive as farmers appreciate the ever-present and growing demand for food from the urbanites.· They were healthier, more productive, more innovative than workers who were consumed by jobs.
· Pegs from Lumley Bridge to the day at Chester-le-Street most productive for dace.· She stayed five years, which she called the most productive of her life.· Arguably, the most productive area of research into higher education over the past 20 years is that concerned with student learning.· Affirmative action has been the most productive route ever for the emergence of minorities into the mainstream.· That is an odd prescription from an apostle of efficiency: you pay your most productive farmers not to produce.· The most productive change-oriented goals contain an inherent opposition.· The research is a learning process and is most productive precisely when it changes prior views and expectations.· Second, they retained capital and labor in locations which did not allow for their most productive use.
· By following a few simple guidelines it is possible to establish a very productive breeding programme.· In ideas, our movement has been very productive, more than justifying its existence by this alone.· I felt very guilty about it but this guilt was not very productive.· Some groups are very decisive, very productive, very creative and very satisfying for their members.· The second approach can be a very productive strategy in a foreign language too.· New leys are usually very productive in the first two or three years.· The received wisdom is that they are not very productive in drama, where we're trying to open up possible responses.
NOUN· This is the claim that industrialism had lightened the intensity of human productive activity.· The government aimed to reduce further its direct role in productive activity and to continue the liberalization of the foreign trade system.· The absence is too striking and consistent not to reflect basic differences in craft organization and productive activities between Harappa and Mesopotamia.· In a sane world meaningless repetition of non-productive activity would be seen to be a variety of obsessive-compulsive disorder.· It was Adam Smith, interestingly, who first used industry to refer to manufacturing and other productive activities.· The reason for this is that women are forced to carry on the main productive activity by themselves because of their subjection.· The results were predictable: the level of productive activity at the office fell off sharply.
· In fact, Dunrossness has long been considered to be the most fertile and agriculturally productive area in the whole of Shetland.· Arguably, the most productive area of research into higher education over the past 20 years is that concerned with student learning.· He has challenged his Democratic opponent in electorally more productive areas, such as public funding for abortions.
· Both building professionals and production managers are concerned with providing a working environment that optimises productive capacity.· Classes emerge when the productive capacity of society expands beyond the level required for subsistence.· The resulting slump left a considerable proportion of productive capacity idle.· The company's current output is 40,000 units per month, which represents 90% of the company's productive capacity.· The potential for inflation after 1945 was great because the productive capacity of the country had been distorted and damaged.· Britain's productive capacity was falling more rapidly than at any time since the dawn of the industrial age.· The first possibility is that such an increase in productive capacity is not undertaken.
· Has the transfer from public to private ownership improved productive efficiency?· But a low capital-gains rate leads to investment decisions based on expectations of tax avoidance rather than productive efficiency.· There is an obvious connection between profit maximisation and productive efficiency.· Also, although productive efficiency is the central, it is not the sole issue where these matters are concerned.
· His conclusion was that these groups could be turned into productive forces by giving the employees a sense of being appreciated.· Looking at extended reproduction, he said: But where the productive forces are increasing, the case is different.· In capitalist society: The development of the productive forces is by no means a smoothly rising curve.· As the productive forces develop so the struggle between classes intensifies.
· It allows the authorities to discriminate between loans for productive investment and loans merely for consumption or speculation.· Without tax finance, much economically productive investment in education would be impossible.· In addition individuals' savings have been directed into house purchase, rather than into productive investment opportunities.
· Males do not go on to construct further nests as polygynous weavers of more productive lands do.· No scheme will be worth much if farmers are allowed merely to give over their least productive land.· Yet, worldwide, only one-and-a-half hectares of productive land is available per person.· Mr Mugabe can not fail to understand the consequence of redistribution of the country's most productive land to subsistence farmers.· The simple reason for that is that farmers put their most marginal and least productive land into set-aside.
· Actually it is wrong to think that your present diet will necessarily lead to a long and productive life.· However, patients with either type of illness can lead productive lives.· It will help you lead a long and productive life.· In other words, children with phenylketonuria can and should have a normal productive life.· The longer seed is allowed to form in the pods, the shorter the productive life of the plants will be.· It stands little chance of living a long, happy, and productive life.· In these terms, the purpose of education is to enable the individual to lead a fulfilling and productive life.
· A child in school is not a productive member of the family.
· It also affects the productive potential of an economy.· These supply constraints are not the usual physical barriers to increased output imposed by the productive potential of the economy.· Huge expanses of fertile land and unlimited supplies of water give it enormous productive potential.
· Contradictions within the productive process are ignored.· A crucial aspect of the productive process is the division of labour into restricted tasks.· Since means of production and means of consumption normally re-enter the productive process, their consumption can be called productive consumption.· And it is with these productive processes that a full sociology of culture is necessarily concerned.· It is worth emphasizing that there can be significant variations, within this situation, in the productive process itself.
· Not withstanding these comforting words, Gerald Ford never succeeded in establishing a productive relationship with the legislative branch.· And with this went the abolition of religion itself - something which was perfectly natural in view of the changed productive relationships in society.
· In contrast, there are the old crystallized forms of dependence on the State and the productive system.· The capacity for science and technology should equally be related to the educational and productive systems.· The state is passive in the productive system, allowing private actors to operate in a relatively unconstrained manner.
· This kind of property is capital and yields income through profit on the productive use of property.· We need to make more productive use of the upper years of high school.· Efficiency refers to the productive use of resources.· It is of value in education to legitimize and make productive use of interests.· Second, they retained capital and labor in locations which did not allow for their most productive use.· Yet, in other areas, the technical resources of the military were put to far more productive uses.
· One aspect of disorganized capitalism is pressure against general welfare expenditures for those not directly engaged in productive work.· More than that, Mercer figures using the ultralight instead of horses will add 10 years of productive work to his life.· Some fix no real limits to the evaluation period, only stating that if used for productive work it must be registered.· Yet despite a bumpy first year, most students were engaged in productive work.· Thought it has a supportive county council and a productive work force, yet it has its cross to bear.· And most ominously, it often has the effect of crippling the performance of formerly productive work groups.· Welfare and social services Recent research has demonstrated that people with severe mental handicaps can undertake productive work, with adequate support.· Meanwhile, in the rest of the room, the hum of productive work goes on.
· They feel useless being no longer productive workers and yet having little to do at home.· The organization has a less productive worker and the employee gets to wrestle with a series of physical and emotional problems.· That is how young people learn to be good citizens and productive workers.· As Ralph had predicted, the most productive workers began to drift off to new employers who promised greater security.· Business-people are discovering that young people can be productive workers, not just cheap, low-skilled laborers.
· He kept hands in work after their most productive years and was reluctant to dismiss them when trade was slack.· Thibadeau has refused to fade from the City Hall scene where he spent so many productive years.· How many more productive years has this one got left?
PHRASES FROM THE ENTRY
- Few ideas have been more productive of controversy than Communism.
WORD FAMILYnounproduceproducerproductproductionreproductionproductivityadjectiveproductive ≠ unproductivecounterproductivereproductivereproducibleverbproducereproduceadverbproductively
1producing or achieving a lot OPP unproductive: Most of us are more productive in the morning. a highly productive meeting2[only before noun] relating to the production of goods, crops, or wealth: the economy’s productive capacity3productive of something formal causing or resulting in something: The meeting was productive of several good ideas.—productively adverb