Meaning & use
evaluative
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Meanings
adjectivebefore a nounformal
Concerned with judging how good, useful, or successful something is.
Grammar: Usually comes before the noun: an evaluative comment, evaluative criteria.
Patterns
- evaluative + noun
- purely evaluative
- evaluative of something
The report ends with an evaluative section that rates each proposal.
Her comments were descriptive rather than evaluative, so no one felt criticized.
Teachers need clear evaluative criteria before they mark essays.
adjectivebefore a nountechnical
Using language to express a personal judgment or opinion about something.
Grammar: Used mainly in academic writing about language and meaning.
Patterns
- evaluative language
- evaluative meaning
- evaluative adjective
Words like 'brilliant' and 'awful' carry evaluative meaning.
In her essay she separates factual statements from evaluative ones.
Word forms
| adverb | evaluatively |
|---|
Common combinations
- evaluative criteria
- The judges worked from a list of evaluative criteria.
- evaluative language
- News reports should avoid heavily evaluative language.
- purely evaluative
- His question was purely evaluative, not factual.
- evaluative research
- Evaluative research asks whether a program actually works.
- an evaluative judgment
- Making an evaluative judgment takes time and evidence.
Synonyms and how they differ
- critical
- Critical often suggests finding faults, while evaluative is neutral and simply means judging quality.
- judgmental
- Judgmental usually criticizes someone for being too quick to judge; evaluative is a neutral, technical word.
- assessing
- Assessing describes the action of measuring something, while evaluative describes the kind of comment or tool used.
Opposites
Word family
- evaluate verb
- to judge how good or useful something is
- evaluation noun
- a careful judgment of quality or value
- evaluator noun
- a person who judges or assesses something
- evaluable adjective
- able to be judged or measured
Commonly confused: evaluative or evaluated?
evaluative vs evaluated
Evaluated is the past tense of the verb (they evaluated the plan); evaluative is the adjective describing judgments or criteria.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'evaluative' correctly?
Choose one answer.
'Evaluative' is an adjective describing a kind of comment, so it fits before 'comment'. Option 2 uses it as a verb, option 3 uses the verb 'evaluate' where an adjective is needed, and option 4 uses the noun 'evaluation'.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “evaluative”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.