The optative mood (abbreviated OPT) is a grammatical mood that indicates a wish or hope. It is similar to the cohortative mood, and closely related to the subjunctive mood.
Ancient Greek, Albanian, Armenian, Georgian, Kurdish, Navajo, Old Prussian, Sanskrit, Serbo-Croatian and Turkish are examples of languages with an optative mood.
English has no morphological optative, but there are various constructions with optative meaning. One uses the modal verb may, e.g. May you have a long life! Another uses the phrase if only with a verb in the past or past subjunctive, e.g. If only I were rich! Another uses the present subjunctive, e.g. God save the Queen!
In Romanian, the conditional and optative moods have identical forms, thus being commonly referred to as the optative-conditional mood.
Read more about Optative Mood: Finnish, Japanese, Mongolian, Sumerian Language, Turkish
Famous quotes containing the word mood:
“The child ... stands upon a place apart, a little spectator of the world, before whom men and women come and go, events fall out, years open their slow story and are noted or let go as his mood chances to serve them. The play touches him not. He but looks on, thinks his own thought, and turns away, not even expecting his cue to enter the plot and speak. He waits,—he knows not for what.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)