preservative meaning
ENWPreservative
- A preservative is a substance that is added to products such as foods, pharmaceuticals, paints, biological samples, wood, etc. to prevent decomposition by microbial growth or by undesirable chemical changes.
- ^ Erich Lück and Gert-Wolfhard von Rymon Lipinski "Foods, 3. Food Additives" in Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry, 2002, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim. doi: 10.1002/14356007.a11_561
FR préservative 
- NounPLpreservativesPREpré-SUF-ative
- (countable) any agent, natural or artificial that acts to preserve, especially when added to food.
- Salt, sugar, and acid all act as preservatives when making pickles.
- (countable) any agent, natural or artificial that acts to preserve, especially when added to food.
- Adjective
Definition of preservative in English Dictionary
- Part-of-Speech Hierarchy
- Adjectives
- Nouns
- Countable nouns
- Countable nouns
- Adjectives
Source: Wiktionary
Grammatically, this word "preservative" is an adjective. It's also a noun, more specifically, a countable noun.