2

I just learned that a word "Authoritative" exists. Up until now I have always used the word "Authorative", which I must have picked up along the way when I was browsing some technical documentation (I'm a software engineer).

I have looked up "Authorative" in Merriam Webster and on Wiktionary, and the word does not exist there. However, a general Google search for "Authorative" turns up quite a few references. Are all these people (including myself) really using a mis-spelled word, or is "Authorative" just a variant spelling?

Improve this question
2

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
5

Authorative is a misspelling.

I looked up "authorative" in as many online dictionaries as I could find (well, actually, I had OneLook Dictionary Search do it for me, but same effect), and found only one result, in Wordnik. However, that one result does not actually contain a definition, just some examples of use. All of the examples clearly meant to say "authoritative".

Google is immaterial here: people misspell things on the internet. If you mean to say that something is

Having or arising from authority; official

then you need to write authoritative.

(Note that the reason for this is that this is an adjectival form of authority, not of author.)

Improve this answer
-2

Authoritive: A person with the authority to command action from others.

In regard to the word, authoritative, it has no value in this context.

Improve this answer
1
  • This seems to be rather scrambled. "Authoritive" is not a word, and is also not what the question mentions. "Authoritative" is the (only) correct spelling.
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Aug 22, 2015 at 21:22

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .