Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Relating to, characteristic of, or used in calling.
- adj. Of, relating to, or being a grammatical case in certain inflected languages to indicate the person or thing being addressed.
- n. The vocative case.
- n. A word or form in the vocative case.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Relating to the act of calling or addressing by name; eompellative: applied to the grammatical case in which a person or thing is addressed: as, the vocative case.
- n. In grammar, the ease employed in calling to or addressing a person or thing: as, Domine, ‘O Lord,’ is the vocative of the Latin dominus.
Wiktionary
- adj. Of or pertaining to calling; used in calling or vocation.
- adj. grammar used in address; appellative; — said of that case or form of noun, pronoun, or adjective, in which a person or thing is addressed; as, Domine, O Lord.
- n. grammar The vocative case
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Of or pertaining to calling; used in calling; specifically (Gram.), used in address; appellative; -- said of that case or form of noun, pronoun, or adjective, in which a person or thing is addressed.
- n. (Gram.) The vocative case.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. relating to a case used in some languages
- n. the case (in some inflected languages) used when the referent of the noun is being addressed
Etymologies
- Late Middle English, from Middle French vocatif, from Latin vocativus ("calling"), from vocatus ("invocation"), from vocare ("to call"), from Proto-Indo-European *wek-, *wekʷ-, *wokʷ- (“give vocal utterance, speak”). See Latin vōx. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English vocatif, from Old French, from Latin vocātīvus (cāsus), vocative (case), from vocātus, past participle of vocāre, to call; see vocation. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“So now, all you lucky people whose names I ordered worked into a rather longish piece of boilerplate latin vocative verse can now share in the tranquil blessings of soft breezes in forested glades, mostly free of singing shrapnel and the deep digestive grunt of artillery.”
“The inaugural "O" is only confirmed as vocative, that is, when the first junctural lurch of "O W" is rounded out by the equally opened-mouthed apposition that results in the line's coming phonetic increment, "thou (w) breath of autumn's being.”
“For Rosenstock-Huessy, the vocative is the condition of dialogue and hence the real condition of a new truth.”
“Nominative for Vocative.a. The use of the nominative for the vocative was a colloquialism in classical Greek.”
“Your "vocative" explanation does help, but it does not convince.”
“Daksha is a vocative, meaning 'possessed of cleverness.”
The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12
“This demonstrates how boy, like man, has transformed from a male term of address (or "vocative") into an exclamation that can be used regardless of the addressee's gender.”
“We no longer hear the vocative compañero -- comrade -- rather it's the once stigmatized señor -- mister -- and it's been a long time since the first person plural has included those who govern us.”
The Huffington Post: Yoani Sanchez: Goodbye "Comrade," Hello "Mister"
“Though, as Mark Twain noted, many Britons "dearly love a lord," most of them have no idea how to address one in the vocative case or on an envelope.”
“Three workmates came to vocative him, and you know, they didn't like the man-eater's fad; wouldn't consonant to recognize his palette as ivan would then, this.”
Fictionaut: Life is Life (or Ode to a great big idiot like Zizek)
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘vocative’.
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phrontistery-v
from phrontistery.info
vaccary, vaccimulgence, vaccine, vacillate, vadelect, vade-mecum, vadimony, vadose, vafrous, vagient, vagile, vagility and 396 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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Some new Wordie words this week
Don't tell them they are not real--they might cry.
glover, breakfront, submaximal, criticality, lanoline, mouthy, botheration, metaphorically, metaphase, disavowal, arum, ostentatiously and 162 more...
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Words about words
Most of these describe word patterns or relationships between words.
panvocalic, palindrome, anagram, transposition, antigram, reversal, isogram, alternade, trinade, beheadment, decapitation, apheresis and 149 more...
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a case of cases
evoking a kind of heavy chest of drawers, for me. Latin (and German) at 11; now Finnish, and a fascination for what else is out there.
Entering all these, I did have to struggle not t...nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, vocative, locative, partitive, inessive, elative, illative, adessive and 62 more...
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Whatever the Case May Be...
Various grammatical cases.
ablative, accusative, vocative, dative, nominative, genitive, locative, abessive, absolutive, multiplicative, addirective, caritive and 49 more...
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Grammar and Linguistics
collocation, equivalence, superordinate, semantic, archaic, etymology, modifier, utterance, idiomatic, hyponym, hypernym, prefix and 14 more...
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Linguistic Terms
eye dialect, pugnacious, portmanteau, sesquipedalian, vocative, ghost word, pyrrhic, subjunctive, surd
Tweets
Looking for tweets for vocative.
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