admonitory

From Latin admonitōrium (“admonition, reminder”)

admonitory (comparative more admonitory, superlative most admonitory)

1. Of or pertaining to an admonition; serving to reprove, warn or advise.

   The schoolboy left an admonitory message on the bathroom wall.

   He wagged an admonitory finger at the culprit.

   • 1604, Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, London: John Windet, Book 1, p. 64,

     Wherefore the naturall measure wherby to iudge our doings, is the sentence of reason, determining and setting downe what is good to be done. Which sentence is either mandatory, shewing what must be done; or else permissiue, declaring onely what may be done; or thirdly admonitorie, opening what is the most conuenient for vs to doe.

   • 1775, Elizabeth Griffith, The Morality of Shakespeare’s Drama Illustrated, London: T. Cadell, A General Postscript, pp. 526-527,

     Mere descriptions of virtue or vice do not strike us, so strongly, as the visible representations of them. Richard the Third’s dream, Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy in her sleep, the Dagger Scene in the same Play, Cardinal Beaufort’s last moments, with many other passages in our Author, of the same admonitory kind, avail us more than whole volumes of Tully’s Offices, or Seneca’s Morals.

   • 1850, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Chapter 15,

     […] Mr. Dick […] was so low-spirited at the prospect of our separation, and played so ill in consequence, that my aunt, after giving him several admonitory raps on the knuckles with her dice-box, shut up the board, and declined to play with him any more.

   • 1934, Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors, London: Victor Gollancz, 1975, “II. A Full Peal of Grandsire Tripes,” The Second Part,

     From it [the pew], Mrs. Venables was able […] to keep an admonitory eye on the school children who occupied the north aisle, and to frown at those who turned round to stare or make faces.