Affixes

Examples are often adjectives: appreciative, decorative, innovative, speculative, talkative, and vituperative. Others can equally well be nouns: formative, laxative, purgative, superlative. A few longer adjectives formed from nouns ending in t can lose the ‑at‑ element through a process called syncopation; for example interpretative can appear as interpretive and preventive is sometimes preferred to preventative. See also ‑ive.