Perfective

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /pə(ɹ)ˈfɛktɪv/

Definitions

1. Pertaining to a grammatical aspect that indicates an action has been completed or fully carried out
2. Describing a verb form or construction used to show that an event or action has reached its conclusion
3. Concerning grammar, marking the aspect that represents the completion or entirety of an action or state

Etymology: "Perfective" is a straightforward formation: it combines "perfect" with the suffix "-ive", which turns a noun or verb stem into an adjective meaning "tending to" or "having the quality of". The base "perfect" arrived in English from Latin "perfectus", the past participle of "perficere", meaning "to complete" or "to carry through to the end", built from "per" ("through, thoroughly") and "facere" ("to make or do"). So the word carries the sense of something thoroughly finished at its root. The suffix has a longer ancestry than the base. It descends from Latin "-īvus", passed into Old French as "-if", and reached Middle English as "-yf", which later settled into the modern "-ive" spelling. English grammar adopted the adjective in its technical sense, so a perfective form is one that presents an action as a whole, complete from beginning to end, rather than as ongoing.

Synonyms: completed, accomplished