hesitative comes from Latin haesitare ('to be undecided'), frequentative of haerere ('to cling, stick'), + the English suffix -ive. Morphologically, the ending is part of the etymology: the suffix is attached to the older base named in the history, producing a later English derivative. In present English, the adjective sense is "marked by hesitation; tentative or wavering", so the historical development ends in a clearly identifiable modern dictionary use. The same base also appears in related forms such as hesitate, hesitant, and hesitation, and in derivatives such as hesitatively. Its semantic neighborhood includes tentative, wavering, hesitant, and irresolute, which helps locate the modern sense without adding a separate etymological claim. The named historical forms include Latin haesitare and Latin haerere.