Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Expressing a wish or choice.
- adjective Of, relating to, or being a mood of verbs in some languages, such as Greek, used to express a wish.
- adjective Designating a statement using a verb in the subjunctive mood to indicate a wish or desire, as in Had I the means, I would do it.
- noun The optative mood.
- noun A verb or an expression in the optative mood.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Expressing or expressive of desire or wish.
- Expressing wish or desire by a distinct grammatical form; pertaining to or constituting the mode named from this use: as, the optative mode; optative constructions.
- noun Something to be desired.
- noun In grammar, the optative mode of a verb. Abbreviated opt.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun rare Something to be desired.
- noun (Gram.) The optative mood; also, a verb in the optative mood.
- adjective Expressing desire or wish.
- adjective (Gram.) that mood or form of a verb, as in Greek, Sanskrit, etc., in which a wish or desire is expressed.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective expressing a wish or a choice.
- adjective related or pertaining to the optative mood.
- noun grammar a
mood ofverbs found in some languages (e.g.Old Prussian ,Ancient Greek ), used to express a wish. English has no inflexional optative mood, but it has modal verbs like "might" and "may" that express possibility. - noun a verb or expression in the optative mood.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective relating to a mood of verbs in some languages
- noun a mood (as in Greek or Sanskrit) that expresses a wish or hope; expressed in English by modal verbs
- adjective indicating an option or wish
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Greek has a particular mood called the optative mood.
Archive 2008-12-14 papabear 2008
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Greek has a particular mood called the optative mood.
Zenit: Father Cantalamessa's 3rd Advent Meditation papabear 2008
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So presumably if *h₁i-yéh₁-n̥t 'they should go' is the optative of an objective verb like *h₁y-énti 'they go', then theoretically *ḱéi-ih₁-th₂e 'you should lie down' rather than later *ḱéi-ih₁-s would have originally been the optative of *ḱéi-th₂or 'you lie down'.
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So presumably if *h₁i-yéh₁-n̥t 'they should go' is the optative of an objective verb like *h₁y-énti 'they go', then theoretically *ḱéi-ih₁-th₂e 'you should lie down' rather than later *ḱéi-ih₁-s would have originally been the optative of *ḱéi-th₂or 'you lie down'.
Archive 2009-09-01 2009
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However, when developing his general theory of speech acts, Austin abandoned the constative/performative distinction, the reason being that it is not so clear in what sense something is done e.g. by means of an optative utterance, expressing a wish, whereas nothing is done by means of an assertoric one.
Him 2009
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Likewise *-i is absent in all other irrealis moods ie. the optative, and likely too, the subjunctive.
The PIE *to-participle in my subjective-objective model 2009
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First of all, the 1ps subjunctive is typically understood to simply be *(-o)-oh₂ (although Jasanoff convincingly argues for a purely "athematic"1 *-oh₂ in the earliest stage of PIE, contrasting with present indicative *-mi) and the 1ps optative is normally *-yeh₁m.
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Thus the importance to it of the subjunctive or optative mood.
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Cristaudo, Wayne 2008
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Imperative (prejective), conjunctive or optative (subjective), preterite or perfect (trajective), neutral indicative (objective) are grammatical necessities arising out of times and spaces.
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy Cristaudo, Wayne 2008
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First of all, the 1ps subjunctive is typically understood to simply be *(-o)-oh₂ (although Jasanoff convincingly argues for a purely "athematic"1 *-oh₂ in the earliest stage of PIE, contrasting with present indicative *-mi) and the 1ps optative is normally *-yeh₁m.
Archive 2008-03-01 2008
qms commented on the word optative
King Henry had no need to give
An order to insert the shiv.
He probably said,
“Would Becket were dead!”
But spoke in the dread optative.
February 16, 2019