OPTATIVE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Optative

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Optative

noun

A mood (as in Greek or Sanskrit) that expresses a wish or hope; expressed in English by modal verbs. Synonym: optative mood.

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Etymology of 'Optative'

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"Optative" Quotes from Famous Books

... contend for five moods, two of which, the potential or powerful, and the subjunctive, are predicated on the same principles as Mr. Harris' optative, interrogative, etc., which they condemn. It is impossible to explain the character of these moods so as to be understood. If, it is said, is the sign of the subjunctive, and may and can ...

— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch

... this tense turned it into a preterperfect in middle Cornish, but in the later form re is only used for the optative. {119} ...

— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner

... that other kinds of sentences, optative, imperative, interrogative, exclamatory, if they express or imply an assertion, are not beyond the view of Logic; but before treating such sentences, Logic, for greater precision, reduces them to their equivalent sentences ...

— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... appears to have been anciently used with cne, would that it might be! but now in general it is not so understood. The phrase may be deemed to be in the Optative, although it does not express that entirely, being formed by the union of the Imperative above with venesma, ...

— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith

Words linked to "Optative" : mode, Ellas, opt, mood, Hellenic Republic, optative mood, option, Greece, Sanskritic language, grammar, modality, Sanskrit