Synonyms for
Respective
Definition
relating to each of the separate persons or things that have been mentioned
Synonyms & similar words
Synonyms by register
Formal
Antonyms
Common collocations
- respective owners
- respective fields
- respective roles
- respective positions
- respective parties
- respective merits
- respective contributions
Word family
adverb respectively
Usage note
Used to refer to things that belong or relate separately to each of the people or things previously mentioned. It is often confused with 'respectful', which means showing deference or high regard.
Example sentences
- The students placed their books in their respective desks.
- The siblings each chose their respective toppings for the pizza.
- The team captains chose their respective teammates for the game.
- The employees were assigned their respective tasks for the project.
- The actors rehearsed their respective scenes for the play.
Quotes
In the respective countries of the world, the peace of a nation depends upon the education of the people.
Every man has his own vocation; his talent is his call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in a river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea. Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, 'Who are you, Sir?' Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince. Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history, our imagination plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house and common day's work; but the things of life are the same to both; the sum total of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred and Scanderbeg and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous: did they wear out virtue? As great a stake depends on your private act to-day as followed their public and renowned steps. When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-Reliance