costive
/ˈkɒstɪv
/adjective
1Constipated.His work is particularly strong in its depiction of the ways in which those at the pinnacle of medical practice have altered their understanding of the causes, effects and, therefore, treatment of costive patients.
2Slow or reluctant in speech or action; unforthcoming: if he did ask her she would become costive...
- Yet although the writer pokes fun, he teases the verbally prolix, emotionally costive Huxley as much as he does the earnest Wilberforce.
- Within the production's terms, George Anton is a powerfully costive Hamlet both hostile to and tainted by this world of animalistic appetite.
- He is certainly gesturally sparing and chromatically costive.
Derivatives
costively
- I can see you now straining costively in a dirty room to come up with that stale breadcrumb of witlessness.
- Having been struggling costively with it for more than two years, I must have written about 50 pages of it that week.
costiveness
- Fruits, fresh vegetables, and cabbages relieve the costiveness and effect softened motions in the morning.
- A little bit of exercise is good and can help, for example, to end the costiveness, but in excess it's bad.
- If the bark clysters should bring on costiveness the laudanum may occasionally be omitted; if this is not attended with the desired consequences, we have recourse to a common injection.
Origin
Late Middle English: via Old French from Latin constipatus 'pressed together' (see constipated).
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