Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
📚 Showing object role 🧐 Blaming 🔤 Direct object case
accusative

accusative

1 9.3
Relating to the form of a word used as a direct object or after some prepositions
  • adjective
  • /əˈkjuːzətɪv/
  • Specialized
translation icon : acusativo
  • For the first three months of class, Foster hammered away at the idea of the subject and object (we never heard the words nominative and accusative cases).
  • accusative case
  • nominative and accusative

Examples

  • When learning Latin, it's essential to understand how the accusative case functions in sentences with direct objects.

  • In English grammar, we use the term accusative to refer to the case that indicates the direct object of a verb.

  • If it's in the room and room is in the the accusative, that would suggest into the room.

  • Nor even the hint of an accusative sentence.

    Fiction book (1997)

  • By the way, only masculine nouns have the accusative form different from the nominative.

    Blog text (20)

  • Second, unlike in French, Italian, and Portuguese, the presence of the Spanish 'accusative a' means that both DAT and ACC full noun phrases have the same form.

    Academic text (1995)

  • The accusative form of the pronoun "you" is used when it's the direct object of a verb in a sentence.

Synonyms

objective
vsaccusative
  • Specialized
9 7.2

The case used for nouns, pronouns and adjectives when they are the object of a verb or preposition

focuses on indicating the direct object or object of some prepositions

Compounds

accusative case
  • Specialized
8.6

The form of a noun or pronoun used as the direct object of a verb

Surface Forms

accusative positive

Morphology

accusative = accuse (opaque) = accuse + ative

The adjective meaning 'relating to the grammatical case' is a technical grammatical term and is not transparently derived from the everyday verb 'accuse' for most learners.

Etymology

Accusative comes from the same Latin root accusare 'to accuse'. As an adjective, it describes the case that shows the object of a verb, the word that the verb acts on, which is why we call those endings or forms 'accusative'.