sélective

Sélective is a French adjective meaning "selective" in English. It describes discernment or discrimination in choosing, and it agrees with the gender and number of the noun it modifies. For example, une attitude sélective (a selective attitude) or une école sélective (a selective school). The masculine form is sélectif, and the plural forms are sélectifs (masc) and sélectives (fem).

Étymologie: sélective derives from Latin selectus, the past participle of eligere “to choose,” passed through the French form sélectif and adapted in modern French as sélective for feminine usage. The related noun is sélectivité or sélectivité, referring to the quality of being selective.

Usage and meaning: In everyday French, sélective describes a tendency to choose criteria and exclude others, often implying a careful, sometimes stringent, filtering or judgment. It can refer to people (une personne sélective), practices (une méthode sélective), or systems and processes (une filtration sélective, une politique sélective). The term is common in education, hiring, consumer behavior, and scientific contexts where selectivity indicates a preference for certain characteristics or outcomes.

In science and technology, the closely related noun sélectivité or the English cognate selectivity denotes the capacity to distinguish or act preferentially on particular substances, stimuli, or conditions. This concept appears in chemistry, pharmacology (selective toxicity), biology (selective pressure), and engineering (selective permeability).

See also: sélectivité, sélection (the process of selection), sélectivité in scientific contexts, and the English terms selectivity, selective, and selectivity.