DIVISIVE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Divisive

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/dɪvˈaɪsɪv/ Listen

adjective

Divisive adj.

Indicating division or distribution.

Creating, or tending to create, division, separation, or difference. "It (culture) is after all a dainty and divisive quality, and can not reach to the depths of humanity."

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Etymology of 'Divisive'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Divisive" Quotes from Famous Books

... any unity in life, any connection between character and achievement, any laws of growth which operate in all departments and in all men, is to discredit one's intelligence and jeopardise one's influence. One field and one tool to each man seems to be the maxim of this divisive philosophy—if that can be called a philosophy which discards unity as a worn-out metaphysical conception, and separates not only men but the arts, occupations, and skills from each other ...

— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... money and advance himself,'—I say, it is incalculable what a change has introduced itself everywhere into human affairs! How human affairs shall now circulate everywhere not healthy life-blood in them, but, as it were, a detestable copperas banker's ink; and all is grown acrid, divisive, threatening dissolution; and the huge tumultuous Life of Society is galvanic, devil-ridden, too truly possessed by a devil: For, in short, Mammon is not a god at all; but a devil, and even a very despicable devil. Follow the Devil ...

— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... it is righteousness thus to fuse together our divisive impulses and march with one mind through life, there is plainly one thing more unrighteous than all others, and one declension which is irretrievable and draws on the rest. And this is to lose consciousness of oneself. ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... nominated by a Whig Convention, which met in Philadelphia, June 7, 1848. The party was so divided that it could not put forth a distinctive platform. Even an attempt to unite upon an expression concerning the Wilmot Proviso was regarded as so divisive that it was not permitted to come to a vote. The real platform was General Taylor, and his popular nickname, "Old Rough and Ready." Although Taylor was no politician and a stranger even to the ballot-box, he regarded ...

— The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address • Abraham Lincoln

... principle of divisive attack in A Discourse of Free-Thinking. There in fifty-three pages he transparently ridiculed contradictions which hedged three areas of fundamental religious belief: "The Nature and Attributes of the Eternal Being or God, ... the Authority of Scriptures, and ... the Sense of Scripture." ...

— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins