Approbative

In linguistics, approbatives are words or grammatical forms that denote a positive affect; that is, they express the appreciation or approval of the speaker. !Claro! (Spanish) and "Gotcha!" (English) are examples.

Sometimes a term may begin as a pejorative word and eventually be adopted in an approbative sense. In historical linguistics, this phenomenon is known as amelioration. Examples from English include "punk", "nerd", "badass", "sick", and "killer".

See also

• Laudative, or praising affect
• Pejorative, or negative affect