How to Use causative in a Sentence
causative
adjective- A virus was found to be the causative agent of smallpox.
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There are only two levels of data that can tell you whether something is causative.
—Lisa Drayer, CNN, 13 May 2021
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The time in front of a device or screen was self-reported, and none of these studies are able to draw any causative conclusions.
—Popular Science, 12 Jan. 2021
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With some infections, by the time a person is evidently ill, their immune system has cleared away most of the causative agent.
—Helen Branswell, STAT, 4 Jan. 2020
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Allcott is emphatic that the link between region and healthy eating is not causative and more research will be needed to tease out its nuances.
—The Washington Post, OregonLive.com, 6 Feb. 2018
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To really understand if that link is causative though, will take more time and lab experiments.
—Megan Molteni, Wired, 1 June 2020
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Up until now, there hasn’t been a way to ask whether a gene whose expression correlates with coral survival actually plays a causative role.
—David Grossman, Popular Mechanics, 23 Apr. 2018
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What’s happened is there’s now an assumption that these risk factors are causative rather than associative, says Elovitz.
—Katie Jennings, Forbes, 17 May 2022
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That’s key for brain health, as oxidative stress is known to be a causative factor in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.
—Cynthia Sass, Mph, Health.com, 7 Aug. 2019
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Still, the authors write that the parasite could simply be more common in species that are declining—correlative, rather than causative.
—Andrew Moseman, Discover Magazine, 3 Jan. 2011
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This headline and story imply a causative relationship between the Bolsonaro policy changes and the drop in homicides.
—WSJ, 5 July 2022
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With respect, therefore, there is a causative link between the heavy saturation of this pair (who have combined for slightly over 3,000 minutes this season) and the profound offensive struggles of the team as a whole.
—Mark Deeks, Forbes, 31 Mar. 2023
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Blaming the deaths of 47 Black men on SCT as causative instead of associated is inaccurate and disrespectful.
—A. Kyle MacK, Scientific American, 20 June 2021
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However, the review also noted that more research should be done to better understand and identify any potential causative effects, as screens are not likely to go away anytime soon.
—Popular Science, 12 Jan. 2021
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The smoke the fires produced, and heavy exposure to it in close quarters, could have been responsible for gunking up the individuals' arteries: a causative factor that even active living and omega-3s couldn't mitigate.
—Gemma Tarlach, Discover Magazine, 27 Dec. 2019
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The relationship among filters, Photoshop apps, and plastic surgery apps is certainly correlative, if not causative.
—Lizzie Plaugic, The Verge, 6 Apr. 2018
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Moreover, there are a multitude of factors that can serve as a catalyst to development of an eating disorder in certain individuals, but that doesn’t mean those factors are causative.
—WSJ, 21 Sep. 2022
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But recently, blood clots and abnormal bleeding in a small number of vaccine recipients in European countries have cast doubt on its safety, although no causative link has been found between the patients’ conditions and the vaccine.
—New York Times, 16 Mar. 2021
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On a scientific level, the specificity of genomic composition—for determining the Covid virus’s variation—was unimaginable for influenza in 1918, an era when doctors did not yet know the causative organism behind the pandemic.
—Howard Markel, Wired, 14 Jan. 2022
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Consider the following observation: There is a causative nexus between the commands to violence in Islamic scripture, the mediating influence of sharia-supremacist scholars, and the bombings of Western targets carried out by young Muslim men.
—Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 5 Sep. 2020
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Although antibiotics can clear the infection with Mycobacterium leprae, the causative bacterium, U.S. clinicians often have difficulty diagnosing this rare and confusing disease.
—Jon Cohen, Science | AAAS, 2 Apr. 2018
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Finding such causative candidates for autism generally involves epidemiological studies that look for correlations between autism rates in a population and an environmental factor of interest.
—Emily Willingham, Discover Magazine, 18 Apr. 2019
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'causative.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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