1 [C] a new plan for dealing with a particular problem or for achieving a particular purpose:
a United Nations peace initiative * a government initiative to combat unemployment
2 [U] the ability to decide and act on your own without waiting for sb to tell you what to do:
You won't get much help. You'll have to use your initiative. * Too much bureaucracy represses creativity and initiative. * She did it on her own initiative (= without anyone telling her to do it).
3 (the initiative) [sing.] the power or opportunity to act and gain an advantage before other people do:
to seize / lose the initiative * It was up to the US to take the initiative in repairing relations.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
Where does this definition of initiative come from?
This entry for initiative is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is initiative a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, initiative is tagged as noun.
Does initiative appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — initiative appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.