a concerned reader writes:

I found the word [nulutative] in David Brin's "The Uplift War".

Among other important factors are [...] mental technique
(e.g. associative, extrapolative, intuitive, holographic,
or nulutative)...

I can find no other use or definition of the word, and since it appears here
in a list, there is no context from which to infer a precise meaning. If it
is a neologism, it is the only one in the book, if you don't count
presumable misspellings. Given Brin's prodigious use of pointedly obscure
words, it's reasonable to think that he may have unearthed this one rather
than invented it.

Dear tsuwm: I found a site which had "nulutative" as part of a list of words to learn. The other words were not particulary obscure.

Words To Learn
... gelid; insouciant; lagniappe; lambience; lissome; moue; nacreous; nubile; nulutative;
peculation; puissant; recombinant; remanent; salacious; scarify; sessile; sidereal; ...
http://www.gci-net.com/users/j/johnw/WordsToLearn.html

Nice that it is in the Undefined list.

I think we need to unloose the canes sanguines on this one. Looks like a study of potential Latin roots would be of some help.

Feeding nul to the Latin Grammar Aid(http://www.nd.edu/~archives/latgramm.htm gives only nullus which has one l too many.

I tried to be cute and thought the "nul" could be amputated. Looking up "utative" brought up a lot of sites in which
"putative" had the "p" separated from the "utative"

P.S. I went back to the site, and found an e-mail address to its creator. I sent him an e-mail very sweetly asking him to send us a definition of "nulutative"..

P.P.S If any of you want to add your pleas to mine, the address is: johnw@gnu.org

I'm bettin' (having seen the same list) that he hasn't bothered to try to look up any of those words in his list!

I had a reply from the linguaphile who at present seems to have sole possion of definition of nulutative. My wounded vanity was a bit soothed by fact he could not recall definition, but said it was in computer at home.
He said he had visited AWAD, but not found AWADtalk. So I gave him directions, and earnestly beseeched him to visit us.

Subject:
Re: nulutative
Date:
Thu, 21 Jun 2001 14:21:05 -0400
From:
John Wiegley <johnw@gnu.org>
To:
william hunt <wwhunt@pacbell.net>
References:
1




>>>>> On Thu Jun 21, william writes:

> Dear John: you have many members of A Word A Day in AWADtalk baffled
> by your word "nulutative". We would very much appreciate your giving
> us the definition, which we have been unable to find. Pretty please,
> with sugar on it? Bill Hunt

I think this word is in a vocabulary book that I have at home, and
it's a recent development. It's not on the Net, or in the OED, so
perhaps it is somebody's pet that I just picked up from a book (which
is where all of those words came from).

Where is AWADtalk, btw? I used to be on AWAD, once upon a time.

John