restrictive

What it means

1. Confining, limiting, containing within defined bounds.

   The help tended to be officious, the rules, if heeded, restrictive, and the management meddlesome.

   1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Soldier in White”, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 168

   2 more examples

   The pinnacle of the effort to fix restrictive meanings to a set of terminology can be found in two papers in American Speech by Feinsilver (1979, 1980).

   2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 7

   RDG explains: "From April 1 2026, the following tickets, Anytime, Off-Peak, Day Travelcards and most Ranger and Rover tickets, will no longer be refundable on the day they become valid for travel." It calls the £40m it thinks it loses "refund abuse", which it explains as "refunds on tickets that have been used but not scanned or endorsed, where a customer falsely states that they did not travel". I'm sure such abuse takes place (and that it's done by passengers). But RDG is taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut and punishing many millions of honest passengers by making tickets more restrictive.

   2026 March 18, Philip Haigh, “Tickets please: 2p per scan to offset fraudulent refunds?”, in RAIL, number 1057, page 48

2. Of clothinglimiting free and easy bodily movement.

   1 more example

   Some of them [teenagers] who will become lesbians clearly are being hit with the same kind of garbage which we got hit with in the fifties. There's been a real resurgence of that in terms of values and double standards and music. The clothes again — we're back to high heels and restrictive little femmy outfits.

   1980 December 6, Cindy Rizzo, Nancy Toder, “Jewish, Lesbian, Feminist, Psychologist, Author—All of the above and more”, in Gay Community News, volume 8, number 20, page 8

In a sentence

The help tended to be officious, the rules, if heeded, restrictive, and the management meddlesome.

1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Soldier in White”, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 168

Where it comes from

1. Middle Frenchrestrictif
2. Englishrestrictive

From Middle French restrictif. Morphologically restrict + -ive.