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IMPERATIVE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Some duty that is essential and urgent
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("imperative" is a kind of...):
duty; obligation; responsibility (the social force that binds you to the courses of action demanded by that force)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A mood that expresses an intention to influence the listener's behavior
Synonyms:
imperative; imperative form; imperative mood; jussive mood
Classified under:
Nouns denoting relations between people or things or ideas
Hypernyms ("imperative" is a kind of...):
modality; mode; mood (verb inflections that express how the action or state is conceived by the speaker)
II. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Requiring attention or action
Example:
requests that grew more and more imperative
Classified under:
Similar:
adjuratory (containing a solemn charge or command)
clamant; crying; exigent; insistent; instant (demanding attention)
peremptory (not allowing contradiction or refusal)
desperate (showing extreme urgency or intensity especially because of great need or desire)
pressing; urgent (compelling immediate action)
shrill; strident (being sharply insistent on being heard)
Also:
assertive; self-asserting; self-assertive (aggressively self-assured)
Antonym:
beseeching (begging)
Derivation:
imperativeness (the state of demanding notice or attention)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Relating to verbs in the imperative mood
Classified under:
Relational adjectives (pertainyms)
Domain category:
grammar (the branch of linguistics that deals with syntax and morphology (and sometimes also deals with semantics))
Pertainym:
imperative mood (a mood that expresses an intention to influence the listener's behavior)
Context examples:
But I cannot give him orders in this case: I cannot say 'Beware of harming me, Richard;' for it is imperative that I should keep him ignorant that harm to me is possible.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Given the extent of nitrogen loading along our coastlines, it is imperative that we better understand the resilience of salt marsh systems to nitrate, especially if we hope to rely on salt marshes and other blue carbon systems for long-term carbon storage, the authors write.
(Salt marshes' capacity to store carbon may be threatened by nitrogen pollution, National Science Foundation)
There was something so imperative and masterful about him that I was quite beside myself—“rattled,” as Furuseth would have termed it, like a quaking child before a stern school-master.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
Realism is imperative to my nature, and the bourgeois spirit hates realism.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
I therefore tried to raise her up, and said, as gravely as I could, that I thanked her, but my duty was imperative, and that I must go.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
She appealed to everybody and to everything, finally wiping her eyes and proceeding to cast out even articles of apparel that were imperative necessaries.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
There was imperative need to adjust myself, to consider the significance of the changed aspect of things.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
"I didn't have the carfare, and I live across the Bay," Martin answered bluntly, with the idea of showing them his imperative need for the money.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
It was no light adventure, this trusting ourselves in a small boat to so raw and stormy a sea, and it was imperative that we should guard ourselves against the cold and wet.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
Spencer I remembered enough to know that altruism was imperative to his ideal of highest conduct.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
