Imperative
An independent clause in the imperative mood uses the base form of the verb, usually with no subject (although the subject you can be added for emphasis). Negation uses do-support (i.e. do not or don't). For example:
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- Now eat your dinner.
- You go and stand over there!
- Don't ever say that word again.
Sentences of this type are used to give an instruction or order. When they are used to make requests, the word please (or other linguistic device) is often added for politeness:
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- Please pass the salt.
First person imperatives (cohortatives) can be formed with let us (usually contracted to let's), as in "Let's go". Third person imperatives (jussives) are sometimes formed similarly, with let, as in "Let him be released."
More detail can be found in the Imperative mood article.
Read more about this topic: Pluperfect Progressive, Tenses, Aspects and Moods, Moods
Famous quotes containing the word imperative:
“Because humans are not alone in exhibiting such behavior—bees stockpile royal jelly, birds feather their nests, mice shred paper—it’s possible that a pregnant woman who scrubs her house from floor to ceiling [just before her baby is born] is responding to a biological imperative . . . . Of course there are those who believe that . . . the burst of energy that propels a pregnant woman to clean her house is a perfectly natural response to their mother’s impending visit.”
—Mary Arrigo (20th century)
“If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“To me Americanism means ... an imperative duty to be nobler than the rest of the world.”
—Meyer London (1871–1926)