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Glite Dictionary
🙏 Expressing a wish 🙏 A wish mood
optative

optative

9.9
Expressing a wish or a possible action
  • adjective
  • /ˈɑːptətɪv/
  • Specialized
translation icon : optativo
  • If Emerson underwrites Pritchard's critical idiom, it is less the affirmative or optative Emerson than it is the more skeptical Emerson admired by Robert Frost.

Examples

  • In some languages, an optative verb form expresses a speaker's wishes or desires.

  • The dominant actor (such as the military) in a weak to moderately strong regime confronted with a weak but potentially growing opposition might initiate a regime change (co-optative reform and inclusion of new actors) to minimize expected damage to its interests.

    Academic text (2000)

  • The optative mood is used to convey hopes for the future in certain ancient languages.

  • When saying, 'May you find happiness,' the verb is in the optative form, reflecting a wish.

Compounds

optative mood
  • Specialized
9.9

A verb form that shows wishes or hopes in some languages

Surface Forms

optative positive

Morphology

optative = opt (semi-transparent) = opt + ative

Formed from the verb 'opt' + the adjective-forming suffix '-ative'; the connection to 'wish' is historically close but the technical grammatical meaning may not be fully obvious to average learners.

Etymology

Optative comes from the Latin root optare, which means 'to wish' or 'to choose' and is related to English words like opt and option. So an optative adjective describes a verb form that shows wishes or possibility, which is why it talks about things like 'may' or 'might'.