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performative.

Being enacted as it is said.

12 characters4 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj

  1. Being enacted as it is said.

    Saying "I do" as part of a wedding ceremony is performative, enacting a marriage.

  2. Insincere, inauthentic or disingenuous; done solely or largely as a performance, to produce an impression or enhance one's reputation.

    We were beginning to suspect that her ethical qualms were sometimes performative, as the urgent need for fairness and justice seemed to apply to some people but not to others.
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree English perform Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂tos Proto-Italic *-ātos Latin -ātuslbor. English -ate Proto-Indo-European *-wós Proto-Indo-European *-iHwósder. Latin -īvus Old French -ifbor. Middle English -yf English -ive English -ative English performative From perform + -ative.

noun

  1. A performative utterance.

Where this word comes from

Etymology tree English perform Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂tos Proto-Italic *-ātos Latin -ātuslbor. English -ate Proto-Indo-European *-wós Proto-Indo-European *-iHwósder. Latin -īvus Old French -ifbor. Middle English -yf English -ive English -ative English performative From perform + -ative.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.