assuasive

English

Etymology

From assuage (“to relieve, soothe”) on the model of persuasive.

Adjective

assuasive (comparative more assuasive, superlative most assuasive)

1. Mild, soothing.
   • 1713, Alexander Pope, Ode for Musick‎^[1], London: Bernard Lintott, pages 2–3:

     If in the Breast tumultuous Joys arise,
     Musick her soft, assuasive Voice applies;
     Or when the Soul is press’d with Cares
     Exalts her in enlivening Airs.

   • 1854, Charles Dickens, “Book 3, Chapter 3, p. 282,”, in Hard Times. For These Times, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], →OCLC:

     “ […] Perhaps,” said Bounderby, starting with all his might at his so quiet and assuasive father-in-law, “you know where your daughter is at the present time?”

   • 1882, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter 12, in Doctor Grimshawe’s Secret‎^[2], Boston: James R. Osgood, published 1883, page 152:

     The medicine, whatever it might be, had the merit, rare in doctor’s stuff, of being pleasant to take, assuasive of thirst, and imbued with a hardly perceptible fragrance,

   • 1965, Robert Wilder, chapter 1, in Fruit of the Poppy,‎^[3], New York: Putnam, page 16:

     The stuff gagged him but he forced it down. This wasn’t smart but the alcohol had an assuasive effect.

Derived terms

• assuasively
• assuasiveness

Noun

assuasive (plural assuasives)

1. (archaic) Anything that soothes.
   • 1808, Thomas Coke, chapter 1, in A History of the West Indies‎^[4], volume 1, Liverpool, page 65:

     […] the heat of the sun operates in all its vigour, without an assuasive to mitigate its force.

   • 1817, Richard Yates, The Basis of National Welfare, London: F. C. and J. Rivington et al., § 9, p. 112,^[5]

     the bland, the courteous, the truly Christian assuasives of friendly attention

   • 1908, Mary Virginia Terhune (as Marion Harland), The Housekeeper’s Week, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, Chapter 23, p. 312,^[6]

     Nature, as the laity may know it, is a vast pharmacopœia of assuasives and curatives