assuasive

comparative more assuasive · superlative most assuasive

1. Mild, soothing.

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

   1965, Robert Wilder, chapter 1, in Fruit of the Poppy,, New York: Putnam, page 16

   3 more examples

   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.

   1713, Alexander Pope, Ode for Musick, London: Bernard Lintott, pages 2–3

   “[…] 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?”

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

   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,

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

plural assuasives

1. archaicAnything that soothes.

   1817, Richard Yates, The Basis of National Welfare, London: F. C. and J. Rivington et al., § 9, p. 112, the bland, the courteous, the truly Christian assuasives of friendly attention

   2 more examples

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

   1808, Thomas Coke, chapter 1, in A History of the West Indies, volume 1, Liverpool, page 65

   1908, Mary Virginia Terhune (as Marion Harland), The Housekeeper’s Week, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, Chapter 23, p. 312, Nature, as the laity may know it, is a vast pharmacopœia of assuasives and curatives