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Elena
What is the difference between 'depressive' and 'depressing'?
Apr 3, 2016 12:14 PM
Answers · 6
2
'A depressive personality' says that a person is going to tend to get depressed. Here depressive is an adjective.
Being a noun 'a depressive' is a person who tends to depression.
So, depressive has nothing to do with causing depression but with being prone to suffer from it.
Something depressing is something which causes depression if we take it literally.
Often, we can colloquially use 'depressing' to talk about sb/ sth that is boring or uninteresting:
Oh! This movie is depressing.
'Depressing' is only an adjective.
I hope this helps. Regards
April 3, 2016
the differences I would say are so slight but this is my persective, I hope it helps:
--depressive is the possible characteristic or quality description of something, it's like the state of being. depressive: something has the ability to cause depression
--depressing can be used as an adjective as well but it is more of an active adjective, as in something leads to being depressed. something depressing is not only has the ability but actively is causing depression.
for future reference, I would say knowing the rules of suffixes -IVE vs -ING will be helpful. '-IVE' is describes an ability, quality, a tendency of something; '-ING' is about something actually happening.
April 3, 2016
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July 26, 2016
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Elena
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English, Russian
Learning Language
English
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