Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Taking or tending to take away; tending to remove; pertaining to ablation.
  • In grammar, noting removal or separation: applied to a case which forms part of the original declension of nouns and pronouns in the languages of the Indo-European family, and has been retained by some of them, as Latin, Sanskrit, and Zend, while in some it is lost, or merged in another case, as in the genitive in Greek. It is primarily the from-case.
  • Pertaining to or of the nature of the ablative case: as, an ablative construction.
  • noun In grammar, short for ablative case. See ablative, adjective, 2. Often abbreviated to abl.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective obsolete Taking away or removing.
  • adjective (Gram.) Applied to one of the cases of the noun in Latin and some other languages, -- the fundamental meaning of the case being removal, separation, or taking away.
  • (Gram.) The ablative case.
  • a construction in Latin, in which a noun in the ablative case has a participle (either expressed or implied), agreeing with it in gender, number, and case, both words forming a clause by themselves and being unconnected, grammatically, with the rest of the sentence; as, Tarquinio regnante, Pythagoras venit, i. e., Tarquinius reigning, Pythagoras came.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective relating to the ablative case
  • adjective tending to ablate; i.e. to be removed or vaporized at very high temperature
  • noun the case indicating the agent in passive sentences or the instrument or manner or place of the action described by the verb

Etymologies

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Examples

  • This idea is expressed in Latin by the ablative without a preposition, and the construction is called the «ablative of means»:

    Latin for Beginners Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge 1900

  • This idea is expressed in Latin by the ablative with the preposition «cum», and the construction is called the «ablative of accompaniment»:

    Latin for Beginners Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge 1900

  • _ The ablative denoting the _place where_ is called the _locative ablative_ (cf. «locus», _place_).

    Latin for Beginners Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge 1900

  • This idea is expressed in Latin by the ablative without a preposition, and the construction is called the «ablative of cause»:

    Latin for Beginners Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge 1900

  • This is clearly an ablative relation, and the construction is called the «ablative of the measure of difference».

    Latin for Beginners Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge 1900

  • Father of Eleven calls his blog Nihilo, the ablative case of the Latin word for nothing.

    BatesLine: November 2005 Archives 2005

  • Father of Eleven calls his blog Nihilo, the ablative case of the Latin word for nothing.

    WWJHMD? - BatesLine 2005

  • From his study of Latin at the high school in Newton, Massachusetts, he knew the word ablative, for it denoted a grammatical form much loved by Julius Caesar, a no-nonsense engineer himself.

    Space Michener, James 1982

  • I have before stated that he wrote a Latin Grammar for the use of his school, and instead of the word ablative, in general use, he compounded three or four Latin words [4] as explanatory of this case.

    The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1838 James Gillman

  • Participants at the meeting concluded that the government needed to regulate the use of the procedure, called ablative surgery.

    China Bans Irreversible Brain Procedure 2008

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  • 1906 US Railway Assn. Standard Cipher Code, shorthand for "subject to immediate acceptance".

    January 19, 2013