rescriptive

R1E1S1C3R1I1P3T1I1V4E1

adjective

Serving to alter an existing law or legal document or arising from such an alteration.

Scrabble 18

Meanings

adjectiverescriptive (comparative more rescriptive, superlative most rescriptive)

comparative more rescriptive · superlative most rescriptive

  1. Pertaining to, or answering the purpose of, a rescript.
    1. Serving to alter an existing law or legal document or arising from such an alteration.

      Harries stresses the rescriptive character of many imperial decrees, responding to appeals rather than initiating law making .

      2013, Law and Empire: Ideas, Practices, Actors, page 11
      3 more examples

      Thus the Queen's colleges in Ireland, although so framed in their constitution that it is impossible for either Catholic or Protestant youth to be the subjects of religious tampering, have been deemed worthy of a rescriptive denunciation from the Pope himself; as has also the Society of Freemasons , which boasts an existence long prior to the power which has thus denounced it; whilst the "Index Expurgatorius" of the Vatican has cut off, from the perusal of the faithful, some of the most useful,as well as the most sublime, emanations of human genius.

      1853 September, “The Relations of the English and the Catholic Churches to the People and to One Another”, in The London Quarterly Review, volume 1, number 1, page 83

      It has been, indeed, the good fortune of the republic that there has been no very strong man in charge of the destinies of any one o f the families who would claim rescriptive right to the administration.

      1892, Edward Everett Hale, Lend a Hand - Volume 9, page 283

      Among the archaeological curiosities of that distant day may still be found in print a letter written in January, 1802, by Gideon Granger, one of the earliest and boldest of the then first executed dogmas, of what has become since lamentably familiar as rotation in office by executive ar4bitrary removal of harmless, often excellent incumbents; by which missive, like imperial rescriptive French royal lettre-de-cachet, Nicholas Powers was dismissed from the postmastership at Poughkeepsie, because, as the letter of destitution states: "The printer of a newspaper is not the most proper person to discharge the duties of a postmaster."

      2022, Charles J. Ingersoll, Recollections, Historical, Political, Biographical, and Social, of Charles J Ingersoll, page 438
    2. Pertaining to or based on reinterpretation

      This analysis provide actual argumentation for the rescriptive model that casts Paul speaking the questions in 3:1, 3, 5, 7-8c, and 9a and the interlocutor responding in 3:2, 4, 6, 8d, and 9b.

      2018, Justin King, Speech-in-Character, Diatribe, and Romans 3:1-9, page 297
      5 more examples

      I prefer to describe it as rescriptive for it assumes sense-making that allows for multiple interpretations and an infinity of the combinations of interpretive strategies that lead to a multiplicity of interpretations.

      2004, Nanette Monin, Management Theory: A Critical and Reflexive Reading, page 1973

      The converse is also true: disagreements on goals and means in squares one and three cannot be reduced to evaluative and rescriptive factors, since these depend fundamentally on technical-scientific positions.

      2009, Richard Rottenburg, Far-Fetched Facts: A Parable of Development Aid, page 180

      Through this material it becomes clear that the disclosive and rescriptive identity movements discussed in chapter 1 may actually be quite difficult to achieve in particular places and cultural environments.

      2011, Hester Parr, Mental Health and Social Space

      Yet the Aunswer wryly reapplies the same pair of words to describe its own finality as an answer, to reassert its boundaries of page space. Through this rescriptive grammar, 'no moer' is now revalenced from an adverbial to a pronominal phrase, announcing immovability in the face of the first poem's pleas.

      2012, Chris Stamatakis, Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Rhetoric of Rewriting, page 190

      Whilst the former is a hermeneutical, rescriptive normativity, acknowledging that no description is value neutral, the latter is an evaluative normativity brought in from the outside, for example in the shape of a normative ecclesial tradition such as confessions, liturgies or Scripture.

      2017, Niclas Blåder, Kristina Helgesson Kjellin, Mending the World?
    3. That involves rewriting or conversion to another form.

      The book is rescriptive, rewriting itself all the time.

      1994, Andreas Fischer, Repetition, page 198
      2 more examples

      Thus, independently of the particular characteristics of the dynamic (or static) rescriptive gauge function, uᵢ, the system re-assumes the harmonic oscillator structure of (qᵢ,pᵢ).

      2007, Edward Belbruno, New Trends in Astrodynamics and Applications III, page 47

      The films effect a hypertension between the impulses of the original material and the rescriptive force of the new edits.

      2012, Akira Mizuta Lippit, Ex-Cinema: From a Theory of Experimental Film and Video, page 59
    4. Involving or initiating an additional act of writing

      Besides serving as sites of advice or vehicles of intelligence, early modern letters also function as transactions in an ongoing epistolary conversation, and as prompts to rescriptive action by their readers.

      2012, Chris Stamatakis, Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Rhetoric of Rewriting, page 98

Origin

Cite this entry
APA

rescriptive. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/rescriptive

MLA

“rescriptive.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/rescriptive. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “rescriptive,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/rescriptive.

Source: rescriptive on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.