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English
Etymology
From assuage (“to relieve, soothe”) on the model of persuasive.
Adjective
assuasive (comparative more assuasive, superlative most assuasive)
- Mild, soothing.
1713, Alexander Pope, Ode for Musick, London: Bernard Lintott, pages 2–3:If in the Breast tumultuous Joys arise,
Musick her soft, assuasive Voice applies;
Or when the Soul is press’d with Cares
Exalts her in enlivening Airs.
1854, Charles Dickens, “Book 3, Chapter 3, p. 282,”, in Hard Times. For These Times, London: Bradbury & Evans, , →OCLC:“ […] Perhaps,” said Bounderby, starting with all his might at his so quiet and assuasive father-in-law, “you know where your daughter is at the present time?”
1882, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter 12, in Doctor Grimshawe’s Secret, Boston: James R. Osgood, published 1883, page 152:The medicine, whatever it might be, had the merit, rare in doctor’s stuff, of being pleasant to take, assuasive of thirst, and imbued with a hardly perceptible fragrance,
1965, Robert Wilder, chapter 1, in Fruit of the Poppy,, New York: Putnam, page 16:The stuff gagged him but he forced it down. This wasn’t smart but the alcohol had an assuasive effect.
Derived terms
Noun
assuasive (plural assuasives)
- (archaic) Anything that soothes.
1808, Thomas Coke, chapter 1, in A History of the West Indies, volume 1, Liverpool, page 65:[…] the heat of the sun operates in all its vigour, without an assuasive to mitigate its force.
- 1817, Richard Yates, The Basis of National Welfare, London: F. C. and J. Rivington et al., § 9, p. 112,
- the bland, the courteous, the truly Christian assuasives of friendly attention
- 1908, Mary Virginia Terhune (as Marion Harland), The Housekeeper’s Week, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, Chapter 23, p. 312,
- Nature, as the laity may know it, is a vast pharmacopœia of assuasives and curatives