MEANING
Expressing or making a judgment about worth, quality, or merit.
Use it for
critical reviews; assessing policy; detecting value-laden wordingMake the standard of judgment explicit instead of hiding it in adjectives.
Words that belong together
- evaluative judgment
- evaluative criteria
- evaluative language
On the page
Calling the reform successful is an evaluative judgment that requires a stated standard.
The rubric separates descriptive accuracy from evaluative reasoning.
Evaluative language in the headline shaped readers' expectations before they saw the evidence.
Nearby words
Opposite meanings
Related words
Word forms
- Base
- evaluative
Usage notes
Primary category: academic. Distinguish evaluative judgments from descriptions, while recognizing that word choice can blend them. State the criteria on which the judgment rests. Normally non-gradable in this sense; comparison requires a specific contextual scale. Derived family (not inflections): evaluation, evaluate.
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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