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Allin

imperative

adjectivenounattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ɪmˈpɛɹ.ə.tɪv//
  • Canada//ɪmˈpɛɹ.ə.tɪv//
  • Canada/[ɪmˈpɛɹ.ə.ɾɪv]/
  • Australia//ɪmˈpeɹ.ə.tɪv//

Essential; crucial; extremely important.

adjective

  1. 1

    Essential; crucial; extremely important.

    That you come here right now is imperative.

    Meantime, alterations at King William Street had become imperative, and by December 22, 1895, the station had been remodelled, as at Stockwell, to provide an island platform with lines each side, and a scissors crossing.

    Give this document to Ozzy. It's imperative that he reads and understands it. Got it?

  2. 2

    Of, or relating to the imperative mood.

  3. 3

    Having semantics that incorporates mutable variables.

  4. 4

    Expressing a command; authoritatively or absolutely directive.

    imperative orders

    The suits of kings are imperative.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₁én Proto-Italic *en Proto-Italic *en- Latin in- Proto-Indo-European *perh₃- Proto-Indo-European *pr̥h₃o- Latin *paro- Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti Proto-Indo-European *-h₂tiinflu. Proto-Italic *-ājō Proto-Italic *-āō Latin -ō Latin parō Latin imperō Proto-Indo-European *-wós Proto-Indo-European *-iHwósder. Latin īvus Latin imperātīvusbor. English imperative Borrowed from Latin imperātīvus.

noun

  1. 1

    The grammatical mood expressing an order (see jussive). In English, the imperative form of a verb is the same as that of the bare infinitive.

    The verbs in sentences like "Do it!" and "Say what you like!" are in the imperative.

  2. 2

    A verb in the imperative mood.

  3. 3

    An essential action, a must: something which is imperative.

    Visiting Berlin is an imperative.

    The new imperative for investment is the Government's objective to secure carbon-neutral transport emissions by 2040.

Forms

plural
imperatives
comparative
more imperative
superlative
most imperative
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).