assuasive

assuasive

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, pp. 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 4389957:

     “ […] 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, Doctor Grimshawe’s Secret, Boston: James R. Osgood, 1883, Chapter 12, p. 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, Fruit of the Poppy, New York: Putnam, Chapter 1, p. 16,

     The stuff gagged him but he forced it down. This wasn’t smart but the alcohol had an assuasive effect.

Derived terms

• assuasively
• assuasiveness

Noun

assuasive (plural assuasives)

1. (archaic) Anything that soothes.
   • 1808, Thomas Coke, A History of the West Indies, Liverpool, Volume 1, Chapter 1, p. 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