Read along with the three podcasts, or open the full dictionary entry for Preventive for the definition, Arabic meaning, synonyms and example sentences.
Narrator: Today's word is "Preventive" — adjective, pronounced /prɪˈventɪv/, with the stress on "ven".
Narrator: Preventive means intended to stop something bad, such as illness or damage, from happening.
Narrator: In plain English, preventive steps are taken just in case.
Narrator: It comes from the Latin praevent-, the past stem of praevenire, to come before.
Narrator: A common collocation is "preventive medicine", which describes healthcare that stops disease starting.
Narrator: It differs from "corrective", because corrective action fixes a problem after it appears.
Narrator: In engineering, preventive maintenance means servicing machines before they break.
Narrator: Medicine, engineering, law and public health all rely on the word.
Narrator: So remember: preventive means acting before harm arrives.
Speaker A: Is it preventive or preventative?
Speaker B: Both are correct! PREVENTIVE is the shorter, older form, from the Latin for coming before.
Speaker A: So I can choose?
Speaker B: Yes, though preventive is preferred in formal writing.
Speaker A: Example sentences?
Speaker B: "Dental check-ups are preventive care", health. "The plant runs preventive maintenance monthly", engineering. "Police took preventive measures", safety.
Speaker A: Common mistakes?
Speaker B: Use one spelling consistently in a document, and stress the second syllable: pre-VEN-tive.
Speaker A: Close relatives?
Speaker B: Precautionary is its cousin, preventative is its twin, and protective is the everyday alternative, but preventive keeps its forward-thinking charm!
Speaker B: Let's use "preventive" in AI prompts — useful for maintenance software and health apps.
Speaker A: How would maintenance software use it?
Speaker B: Schedule tasks.
Prompt: Build a preventive maintenance schedule that reminds technicians to service each machine every five hundred operating hours.
Speaker A: And health apps?
Speaker B: Encourage check-ups.
Prompt: List the preventive health checks recommended for adults over forty in the UK, with how often each is offered.
Speaker A: Could it help IT teams?
Speaker B: Yes, security.
Prompt: Suggest five preventive security measures for a small office network, ordered by cost.
Speaker A: One more?
Speaker B: Style checking.
Prompt: Make this report use preventive consistently instead of mixing it with preventative.
Preventive — meaning in Arabic & definition More P courses GL Dictionary