"Optative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consequence can be gathered, that Adam was taught the names of all Figures, Numbers, Measures, Colours, Sounds, Fancies, Relations; much less the names of Words and Speech, as Generall, Speciall, Affirmative, Negative, Interrogative, Optative, Infinitive, all which are usefull; and least of all, of Entity, Intentionality, Quiddity, and other significant ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... Their verbs have four moods, the indicative, optative, imperative, and infinitive, and five tenses, one present, three preterites, and one future. The rules of their formation are simple. By changing the termination of the infinitive into a, we have the ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... this tense turned it into a preterperfect in middle Cornish, but in the later form re is only used for the optative. {119} ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... Alban!" Here the condition "if thou hadst kept, etc." stands without the consequence "thou wouldst not have died," or something of the kind. Such a condition may be expressed without si, just as in Eng. without "if," cf. Iuv. III. 78 and Mayor's n. The use of the Greek optative to express a wish (with [Greek: ei gar], etc., and even without [Greek: ei]) is susceptible of the same explanation. The Latin subj. has many such points of similarity with the Gk. optative, having absorbed most of the functions of the lost Lat. optative. [Madv. ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... [Greek: Hegountai].] 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 |
