optative

  1. Adjective.  expressing a wish or a choice.
  2. Adjective.  elated or pertaining to the optative mood.
  3. Noun.  (grammar) a mood of verbs found in some languages (e.g. Old Prussian, Latin), used to express a wish. English has no inflexional optative mood, but it has modal verbs like "might" and "may" that express possibility.
  4. Noun.  a verb or expression in the optative mood.

This is an unmodified, but possibly outdated, definition from Wiktionary and used here under the Creative Commons license. Wiktionary is a great resource. If you like it too, please donate to Wikimedia.

This entry was last updated on RefTopia from its source on 3/20/2012.