ELECTIVE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Elective

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/ɪlˈɛktɪv/ Listen

adjective

Elective adj.

Exerting the power of choice; selecting; as, an elective act.

Pertaining to, or consisting in, choice, or right of choosing; electoral. "The independent use of their elective franchise."

Bestowed or passing by election; as, an elective office. "Kings of Rome were at first elective;... for such are the conditions of an elective kingdom."

Dependent on choice; that can be refused; as, an elective college course. Opposite of required or mandatory.

Elective affinity or Elective attraction (Chem.), a tendency to unite with certain things; chemism.

noun

Elective n. In an American college, an optional study or course of study; a course that is not required. (Colloq.)

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Etymology of 'Elective'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Elective" Quotes from Famous Books

... your opportunities will have broadened, and you begin to have something similar to the elective system. You can choose more freely how to spend your time. Your development to this point, I have already said, may be called the rounding of the handle; and your education will be normal if you have average application, intelligence, and memory. During college ...

— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"

... their tendencies and always difficult to blend, the Netherland people has ever been compounded. A certain fatality of history has perpetually helped to separate still more widely these constituents, instead of detecting and stimulating the elective affinities which existed. Religion, too, upon all great historical occasions, has acted as the most powerful of dissolvents. Otherwise, had so many valuable and contrasted characteristics been early fused into a whole, it would be difficult to show a race ...

— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... regulated the rules and formulae to be gone through in choosing an emperor, and named the seven "electors" who were to vote. This simplified matters so far as the repeatedly contested elections went; but it failed to strike to the real difficulty. The Emperor remained elective ...

— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... themselves made of their numbers at the period; for, in a long and remarkable petition, presented to the House of Commons in January, 1792, they say: "Behold us then before you, three millions of the people of Ireland." These three millions became, by the Bill of '93, entitled to the elective franchise; or, as the Bill itself more correctly expressed it, "such parts of all existing oaths," as put it out of their power to exercise the elective franchise, were repealed. The Catholics were not slow in availing themselves of this important privilege, which ...

— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... key to Stanford's elective system of instruction. The ordinary class divisions were not officially recognized. Even the students until recently made far less of the terms "freshmen," "sophomore," "junior" and "senior," than is made of them at most ...

— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

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