Some languages distinguish between the
optative mood and an imprecative mood (
abbreviated
An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...
). In these languages, the imprecative mood is used to wish misfortune upon others, whereas the optative mood is used for wishes in general. In such a language, "May he lose the race" is in imprecative mood, whereas "May I win the race" would be in optative mood. A commonly given example of a language with an imprecative mood is
Turkish, which uses an otherwise obsolete future-tense suffix ''-esi'' solely in the third person for curses:
Imprecative retorts in English
While not a mood in
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
, expressions like ''like hell it is'' or ''the fuck you are'' are imprecative retorts.
These consist of an
expletive + a personal pronoun subject + an auxiliary verb.
References
Grammatical moods
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