Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Elective   /ɪlˈɛktɪv/   Listen
Elective

adjective
1.
Subject to popular election.  Synonym: elected.
2.
Not compulsory.  "An elective course of study"



Related search:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Elective" Quotes from Famous Books



... to the Holy Father, whose authority naturally supersedes all others. Sometimes the power to dispense lies with the local superior, but it is a prerogative seldom used, and wisely so. In every order the internal government of each house is of an elective form, but when once chosen the superiors exercise absolute authority. The community meets every three years (in some orders every year) and chooses by vote a superioress, an assistant superioress and a mistress of novices. Only ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... tendencies and always difficult to blend, the Netherland people has ever been compounded. A certain fatality of history has perpetually helped to separate still more widely these constituents, instead of detecting and stimulating the elective affinities which existed. Religion, too, upon all great historical occasions, has acted as the most powerful of dissolvents. Otherwise, had so many valuable and contrasted characteristics been early fused into a whole, it would be difficult to show a race more richly endowed by Nature for dominion ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Spain) was crowned Emperor at Bologna, this national independence had been irretrievably lost by the Italians. This confederation of evenly-balanced Powers was now exchanged for servitude beneath a foreign monarchy, and for subjection to a cosmopolitan elective priesthood. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... licensing authorities be appointive or elective? By whom should they be appointed, and for what ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... in the direct line of succession, a certain Ian Moidart, or John of Moidart, who took the title of Captain of Clanranald, with all the powers of Chief, and even Glengarry's ancestor recognised them as chiefs de facto if not de jure. The fact is, that this elective power was, in cases of insanity, imbecility, or the like, exercised by the Celtic tribes; and though Ian Moidart was no chief by birth, yet by election he became so, and transmitted his power to his descendants, as would King William ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... to this arrangement, if the parties interested had seen fit to make it or even to think of it. But "Portia," as some of the mansion-house people called her, did not happen to awaken the elective affinities of the lonely widower. He met her once in a while, and said to himself that she was a good specimen of the grand style of woman; and then the image came back to him of a woman not quite so large, not quite so imperial in her port, not quite so incisive in her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... close of the disastrous war with the Japanese in 1905, the cry from the Russian people for a Congress, or some form of elective government, had been so strong that the Czar had to give in. So he called the first Duma. This body of men, as has been explained, could talk and could complain, but could pass no laws. The first Duma had had so many grievances and had talked ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet

... who would have the right if, by impossibility, such audacity should seize upon his mind, of depositing a black ball against the budget. Well, this privileged being does not like that I, and others like me, should assume the importance and authority of that insolent elective Chamber. ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... former rule. In the name of the Commons the Speaker invested him with a mantle of State, placed the sceptre in his hand, and girt the sword of justice by his side. By the new Act of Government Cromwell was allowed to name his own successor, but in all after cases the office was to be an elective one. In every other respect the forms of the older Constitution were carefully restored. Parliament was again to consist of two Houses, the seventy members of "the other House" being named by the Protector. The Commons regained their old ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... speech or proposed a measure in support of the system of parliamentary government as explained by Baldwin and Howe, and even W. Lyon Mackenzie. His energy and eloquence were directed towards the establishment of an elective legislative council in which his compatriots would have necessarily the great majority, a supremacy that would enable him and his following to control the whole legislation and government, and promote his dominant idea of a Nation Canadienne in the valley of the St. Lawrence. ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... in some degree they come under the control of the Church. The commissioners appoint the teachers in the schools and keep up the school buildings, but their outlay is also very small, for the salaries of teachers, usually women, are appallingly low. The really important elective office in the parish is that of churchwarden (marguiller). In the church the churchwardens have a special seat of honour assigned to them. They control the temporalities and may beard even the cure himself. Large sums of money pass through their hands. They receive the pew rents,—and ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... There was a subdivision of the Aristocrats, into violent and moderate, which was important. The violent Aristocrats would have wished to preserve all the powers of government in the hands of the Regents, and that these should remain self-elective; but choosing to receive a modification of these powers from the Stadtholder, rather than from the people, they threw themselves into his scale. The moderate Aristocrats would have consented to a temperate mixture of democracy, and particularly, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... done, but much more remains to be done by women. If they had possessed the elective franchise, the reforms which have cost them a quarter of a century of labor would have been accomplished in a year. They are still subject to taxation upon their property, without any voice as to the levying or destination of the tax; and are still subject to laws made by men, ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous

... spirit of liberty. This, within certain limits, is probably true; and, in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favour, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... freedom." In 1857 he avowed himself "not in favor of" what he improperly called "negro citizenship," for the Constitution discriminates between citizens and electors. Three days before his death he declared his preference that "the elective franchise were now conferred on the very intelligent of the colored men, and on those of them who served our cause as soldiers;" but he wished it done by the States themselves, and he never ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft

... that our critics so uniformly accuse us of subjectivism, of denying the reality's existence? It comes, I think, from the necessary predominance of subjective language in our analysis. However independent and elective realities may be, we can talk about them, in framing our accounts of truth, only as so many objects believed-in. But the process of experience leads men so continually to supersede their older objects ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... take a king of the family of the Gungings, Agilmund, son of Ayo, like the rest of the nations, says Jornandes; for they will be no more under duces, elective war-kings. And then follows a fresh saga (which repeats itself in the myths of several nations), how a woman has seven children at a birth, and throws them for shame into a pond; and Agilmund the king, riding by, stops ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... which divine aid and cooperation can act? Certainly we cannot suppose that the divine beings actually and literally turn our bodies and direct our hands and our feet this way or that, to do what is right: it is obvious that they must actuate the practical and elective element of our nature, by certain initial occasions, by images presented to the imagination, and thoughts suggested to the mind, such either as to excite it to, or avert and withhold ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... Roman Empire, which he founded in the year 800 by a mystically vague compact with the Pope, was never a close bond of union, even in his stern and able hands. Under his weak successors that imposing league rarely promoted peace among its peoples, while the splendour of its chief elective dignity not seldom conduced to war. Next, feudalism came in as a strong political solvent, and thus for centuries Germany crumbled and mouldered away, until disunion seemed to be the fate of her richest lands, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... own amendment at the will of the sovereign people expressed in a regular and solemn manner,—where the will of the people thus governs, and (for example,) there is no "taxation without representation,"—where the elective franchise is free, and every man capable of intelligently exercising the right may give his voice for altering the Constitution or Law,—and where, therefore, there can be no necessity of violently opposing the laws, and no excuse for meanly evading them;—such ...
— The Religious Duty of Obedience to Law • Ichabod S. Spencer

... against Piso, about the manner in which he had conducted the proconsular administration of Gaul. Caesar was even then considered as the leader of the popular party, and as an opponent of the senate and its influence in the constitution. [238] It was at that time that Caesar, on going from home to the elective assembly, said to his mother, 'To-day you shall see your son either as pontifex, or you shall never see him again.' Caesar, however, is here called an adolescentulus only in comparison with the aged Catulus, for he was at that time thirty-six years old. [239] 'In public ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)

... scoundrels, and have ample scope for industrial enterprise, and are free to choose their private pleasures, they resign themselves to the loss of electing their rulers without great unhappiness. There are greater evils in the world than the deprivation of the elective franchise, great and glorious as is this privilege. The arbitrary rule of the emperors was fatal to political aspirations and rights, but the evils of political slavery were qualified and set off by the excellence of the civil code, and the privileges ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... have had a much more powerful tendency to alienate the affection of the people, and produce those direful consequences which are now boldly said to have arisen unprovoked. When the Irish Catholics perceived, from the manner in which their petition for the elective franchise was treated, that in the Irish House of Commons they were not to look for friends, they resorted to the Throne. The supplications which had met only with contumely when addressed to the Irish Commons, ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous

... Druidic organisation probably denoted no more than that the Druids were bound by certain ties, that they were graded in different ranks or according to their functions, and that they practised a series of common cults. In Gaul one chief Druid had authority over the others, the position being an elective one.[1037] The insular Druids may have been similarly organised, since we hear of a chief Druid, primus magus, while the Filid had an Ard-file, or chief, elected to his office.[1038] The priesthood ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... and thereby to admit to the suffrage all women who, as householders or otherwise, possessed the qualification required of male electors. For women not to make their claim to the suffrage, at the time when the elective franchise was being largely extended, would have been to abjure the claim altogether; and a movement on the subject was begun in 1866, when I presented a petition for the suffrage, signed by a considerable number of ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... Bull," which exactly regulated the rules and formulae to be gone through in choosing an emperor, and named the seven "electors" who were to vote. This simplified matters so far as the repeatedly contested elections went; but it failed to strike to the real difficulty. The Emperor remained elective and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... were named archons, or rulers for life,—an office which was at first handed down from father to son, but which soon became elective; that is to say, all the people voted for and elected their own rulers. Then nine archons were chosen at once, but they kept their office ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber

... Baptists and Congregationalists setting up superintendents (overseers, Bishops) over their churches because the needs of the time demand such supervision. And on the other hand we find Anglicans inclining to exchange prelacy for a more modest and elective form of episcopacy. In this respect the two extremes are drawing together to an extent which would have been incredible twenty years ago, and, given good will, it should be possible to find even here a ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various

... revulsion at contact with them, and execute their respective movements on this ground." He also says: "We may ascribe the feeling of pleasure or pain (satisfaction or dissatisfaction) to all atoms, and thereby ascribe the elective affinities of chemistry to the attraction between living atoms and repulsion between hating atoms." He also says that "the sensations in animal and plant life are connected by a long series of evolutionary stages with the simpler forms of sensation that we find in the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... late, as the best means of restoring their own republican aristocracy, was now adopted by Dioclesian as the simplest engine for overthrowing finally the power of either senate or army to interfere with the elective privilege. This he endeavored to centre in the existing emperors; and, at the same moment, to discourage treason or usurpation generally, whether in the party choosing or the party chosen, by securing to each emperor, in ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... mule by the bridle into the town, and removed to a respectful distance the importunity of the crowd. Without renouncing his title by royal descent, Palaeologus encouraged a free discussion into the advantages of elective monarchy; and his adherents asked, with the insolence of triumph, what patient would trust his health, or what merchant would abandon his vessel, to the hereditary skill of a physician or a pilot? The youth of the emperor, and the impending dangers of a minority, required the support ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... to make a dash for the crown, so the chivalrous Wogan narrates. In 1747 (June 6), Chambrier had reported to Frederick the Great that Cardinal Tencin was opposed to the ambition of the Saxon family, which desired to make the elective crown of Poland hereditary in its house. The Cardinal said that, in his opinion, there was a Prince who would figure well in Poland, le jeune Edouard (Prince Charles), who had just made himself known, ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... circumstances he was lifted, at one bound, to the highest and widest sphere of influence, upon the opinion of the country, which our political establishment presents—I mean the Senate of the United States. The elective body, the Legislature of Ohio, was filled in almost equal numbers with Whigs and Democrats, but a handful of Liberty party men held the control to prevent or determine a majority. They elected Mr. Chase. The concurrence is similar, in its main features, to the election ...
— Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase - Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of - Dartmouth College, at Hanover • William M. Evarts

... and politicians and caucuses and all the paraphernalia of elective and debating bodies? Well, not quite; still very much curtailing the functions of these bodies and making laws by the direct action of the people themselves and curtailing the interference of professed legislators ... The little ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan

... either had no rule, or none that was steadily observed, in filling the vacant throne; and present convenience, in that emergency, was more attended to than general principles. We are not, however, to suppose that the crown was considered as altogether elective; and that a regular plan was traced by the constitution for supplying, by the suffrages of the people, every vacancy made by the demise of the first magistrate. If any king left a son of an age and capacity fit for government, the young prince naturally stepped into the throne: ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... held as to the constitution of the chief executive office. After the initial question, whether the office should be single or plural, was decided, the manner of election remained to be considered. The early proposal to make the President elective by the national legislature was dropped as the office assumed greater importance in the general scheme. If the independence of the legislature was to be maintained, some form of indirect popular choice was ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... little remarkable that the English refugees, who were quite numerous in the colony, were in sympathy with the arbitrary assumptions of the governor. They greatly strengthened his hands by sending a Memorial to the West India Company, condemning the elective franchise which ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott

... of very great evils will be cheaply accomplished if women by voting can right themselves. It must be confessed, to our shame, that we have failed to right them; though it may at the same time be doubted whether the elective franchise, which is claimed as the means of justice, would not now belong to women, if it had been even generally demanded. So far the responsibility is partly with woman herself, who must also help ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... which ever has been conferred on mankind. We have seen anarchy and servitude at once removed; a throne strengthened for the protection of the people, without trenching on their liberties; all foreign cabal banished, by changing the crown from elective to hereditary; and what was a matter of pleasing wonder, we have seen a reigning king, from an heroic love to his country, exerting himself with all the toil, the dexterity, the management, the intrigue, in favor of a family of strangers, with which ambitious ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... remarks the Harvard College of some fifty years ago offers some striking exceptions. It was not the large and fashionable university that it has lately grown to be, with its multiplied elective courses, its numerous faculty, and its somewhat motley collection of undergraduates; but a small school of the classics and mathematics, with something of ethics, natural science, and the modern languages added to its old-fashioned, scholastic curriculum, and with ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... in restoring order, but it was obvious that the gold-fields contained men who were averse to a peaceable settlement. Notwithstanding that the number of the elective members of the Legislative Council was more than once increased; that, with the full consent of the Home Government, a bill was being prepared for the introduction of responsible government; and that the material condition of the diggers was being rapidly improved, the Lieutenant-Governor had, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... is also well aware that the differences between man and man, once mere money is put aside, are so slight as to be practically almost negligible. Thus the average woman is under none of the common masculine illusions about elective affinities, soul mates, love at first sight, and such phantasms. She is quite ready to fall in love, as the phrase is, with any man who is plainly eligible, and she usually knows a good many more such men than one. Her primary demand in marriage is not for the agonies of romance, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... may be said of the State governments themselves. Suppose the legislature of a State, having the power to appoint the governor and the judges, should omit that duty, would not the State government remain unorganized? No doubt, all elective governments may be broken up by a general abandonment, on the part of those intrusted with political powers, of their appropriate duties. But one popular government has, in this respect, as much security as another. The maintenance of this Constitution ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... consists in the free-will, and hence virtue is called an elective or voluntary habit. But latria belongs to religion, and latria implies a certain servitude. Hence ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas

... the foundations of ecclesiastical privilege and influence, were discovering that they had set up King Stork in place of King Log; the exactions of an Augustus were as nothing compared with the lawless pillaging of the new feudalism; and elective sovereigns, ruling by the grace of their chief subjects, were powerless for good as well as harm. The lower ranks of laymen had no better cause to be content with the new order under which the small freeholder was oppressed, ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... fifteen years. In India the local government is carried on in some places by a Council of Village Elders, and in other places by a Headman whose office is sometimes described as hereditary, but is more probably elective, the choice being confined, as in the case of the old Teutonic kingship, to the members of a particular family. In the Russian village, on the other hand, the government is conducted by an assembly at which every head of a household ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske

... greater wants. If the first work of the poor voters is to try to create a "poor man's paradise," as poor men are apt to fancy that Paradise, and as they are apt to think they can create it, the great political trial now beginning will simply fail. The wide gift of the elective franchise will be a great calamity to the whole nation, and to those who gain it as great a calamity as ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... 1572, of Sigismund II., Augustus, the last of the Jagellons, the power of the king, already limited by that of two chambers, was still further diminished, and the crown became elective. While occupied in besieging the Huguenots at Rochelle, and at a time when Poland enjoyed more religious liberty than any other country in Europe, Henry of Valois was elected to the throne, in succession ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various



Words linked to "Elective" :   course of instruction, elect, class, electoral, optional, elected, appointive, course, non-elective, nonappointive, course of study



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org