OPTATIVE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • 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.

adjective

Indicating an option or wish.

Relating to a mood of verbs in some languages.

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Etymology of 'Optative'

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"Optative" Quotes from Famous Books

... Schneider, Kuehner, and some other editors have [Greek: hegounto] but Poppo and Dindorf seem to be right in adopting the present, notwithstanding the following optative.] ...

— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon

... of England, in these manners of dispensing the power of the keys, does cut off all disputings and impertinent wranglings, whether the priest's power were judicial or declarative; for possibly it is both, and it is optative too, and something else yet; for it is an emanation from all the parts of his ministry, and he never absolves, but he preaches or prays, or administers a sacrament; for this power of remission is a ...

— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... philosophy may serve to elucidate the uses of this maxim. Take first the case of irrationals. In old days, irrationals were inferred as the supposed limits of series of rationals which had no rational limit; but the objection to this procedure was that it left the existence of irrationals merely optative, and for this reason the stricter methods of the present day no longer tolerate such a definition. We now define an irrational number as a certain class of ratios, thus constructing it logically by means of ratios, instead of arriving at it by a doubtful inference from them. Take again the ...

— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell