From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishcausativecaus‧a‧tive /ˈkɔːzətɪv $ ˈkɒː-/ adjective formal CAUSEacting as the cause of something Smoking is a causative factor in several major diseases.
Examples from the Corpus
causative• Mycobacterium paratuberculosis is the causative agent of Johne's disease, a chronic enteritis in ruminants and in other animals.• Regardless of the causative agent, the tremors and twitches experienced by some users of caffeine are usually harmless.• False perception can arise only if the nervous system has spontaneous activity independently of any causative external object.• Excessive age of the toilets was implicated as a causative factor.• The causative organism, like that responsible for many cases of non-specific infection, is a member of the chlamydia group.• In addition, samples containing granulomatous lesions from patients with acute disease should be most likely to contain a causative pathogen.• No simple causative relationship between industrialisation and the organisation of sexuality is suggested.• In the next section we will also discuss the loss of a morphological rule that created causative verbs from adjectives. 