assuasive

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English

Etymology

From assuage (to relieve, soothe) on the model of persuasive.

Adjective

assuasive (comparative more assuasive, superlative most assuasive)

  1. 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)

  1. (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