<p><strong>Adjective:</strong></p><ul><li>giving form or shape; forming; shaping; fashioning; molding: a formative process in manufacturing</li><li>relating to formation or development: a child's most formative years</li></ul><p><strong>Synonyms:</strong></p><ul><li>impressionable</li><li>receptive</li><li>susceptible</li></ul><p><strong>Biology:</strong></p><ul><li>capable of developing new cells or tissue by cell division and differentiation: formative tissue</li><li>concerned with the formation of an embryo, organ, or the like</li></ul><p><strong>Education:</strong></p><ul><li>continuous and diagnostic, and covering specifically the current material with which the student is actively engaged; ongoing: formative evaluation; Compare summative (def 2).</li><li>formative assessment; formative evaluation; formative feedback</li></ul><p><strong>Grammar:</strong></p><ul><li>relating to a formative, an affix that indicates the part of speech of a derived word</li></ul><p><strong>Noun:</strong></p><ul><li>a derivational affix, particularly one that determines the part of speech of the derived word, as -ness, in loudness, hardness, etc.</li><li>(in generative grammar) any element, as a word, affix, or inflectional ending, functioning as a minimal syntactic unit that can be used in forming larger constructions</li></ul>