Meaning of manipulative in English

manipulative

adjective

disapproving

/məˈnɪp.jə.lə.tɪv/ us

/məˈnɪp.jə.lə.t̬ɪv/

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A manipulative person tries to control people to their advantage:

Even as a child she was manipulative and knew how to get her own way.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Controlling and being in charge

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(Definition of manipulative from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

manipulative | American Dictionary

manipulative

adjective

/məˈnɪp·jə·lə·t̬ɪv, -ˌleɪ·t̬ɪv/

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tending to influence or control someone or something to your advantage, often without anyone knowing it:

He is resourceful, smart, skillful, ingenious, and savvy, but he also can be manipulative.

(Definition of manipulative from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of manipulative

manipulative

Separate areas provided opportunities for housekeeping, blocks, puzzles, games, and precast and manipulative toy play activities, as well as an option for individual reading.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Women also use ai with manipulative predicates in request-type acts.

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Manipulative crying would then be a conditioned, merely "unconscious" reflex.

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Soltis addresses the issue of the communicative content of crying in terms of honest signaling of need or vigor, or manipulative signaling.

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Most of what has happened in human genetics in the last ten years has been the result of the astonishing manipulative power of molecular biology.

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Interaction and communication among animals are often deceptive and manipulative, as well as cooperative.

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Additionally, the interaction between gender and manipulative exploration was statistically significant.

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Both types of information and structure may be held simultaneously to facilitate the different manipulative and generative purposes of the designer.

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This stance towards the past is not simply a rationalising or manipulative rewriting of it by the people who gain power.

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Crying for proximity is not necessarily manipulative, therefore, but may contribute to infant survival.

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How manipulative is this, with or without consent, and, if manipulative, is it unethical?

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Nursery activities included free play and some structured activities, including storytelling, singing songs, manipulative activities, and gross motor activities.

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Given the manipulative domain of this planner, these parameters are either an object name or a location name or both.

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To what extent does science, if it is interpreted to be interventionistic, have anything to do with nature and not merely with our manipulative powers?

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The recruitment consequences of this pattern were investigated using manipulative experiments and observations.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

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