constructive

adjective more constructive · most constructive

1. Relating to or causing construction.

   Opposite: destructive

2. Carefully considered and meant to be helpful. Sections of the media are culpable of only describing two types of African – powerful and corrupt, or destitute and starving. But Comic Relief’s biennial guilt trip perpetuates these stereotypes and fails to move the debate on in a constructive way.

   Similar: productive, helpful, useful

3. Serving a useful purpose. At the same time, it was Marx's view that under communism men's individual possibilities would display themselves only in socially constructive ways, so that conflicts among individuals would lose all raison d'être.
4. Deemed after the fact to exist or to have occurred, despite the formal process not having been followed; often when there was no intention to do so at the time. constructive dismissal
5. Not direct or expressed, but inferred. A President's power begins slipping away the moment it is known that he is going to leave: I had seen that in 1952, in 1960, in 1968. On the eve of my resignation I knew that my role was already a symbolic one, and that Gerald Ford's was now the constructive one. My telephone calls and meetings and