Word.ws English Dictionary

imperative

/ɪmˈpɛɹ.ə.tɪv/US/ɪmˈpɛɹ.ə.tɪv/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

imperative adjective: essential; crucial; extremely important.

Adjective

imperative (comparative more imperative, superlative most imperative)

  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.1941 May, “Jubilee of the City Tube”, in Railway Magazine, page 224
  2. Of, or relating to the imperative mood.
  3. Having semantics that incorporates mutable variables.
    Antonyms:
    functional
  4. Expressing a command; authoritatively or absolutely directive.
    • imperative orders
    • The suits of kings are imperative.1612–1634, [Joseph Hall], “(please specify the page)”, in [Contemplations vpon the Principall Passages of the Holy Storie], volume (please specify |volume=I to VIII), London, →OCLC

Noun

imperative (countable and uncountable, plural imperatives)

  1. (uncountable) 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.
    Synonyms:
    imperative mood
  2. (countable) A verb in the imperative mood.
  3. (countable) An essential action, a must: something which is imperative.
    • Visiting Berlin is an imperative.
    • Anything grandiose or historically based tends to sound flat and banal when it reaches English, partly because translators get stuck between contradictory imperatives: juggling fidelity to the original sense with what is vocally viable, they tend to resort to a genteel fustian which lacks either...2014 March 1, Rupert Christiansen, “English translations rarely sing”, in The Daily Telegraph (Review), page R19

imperative meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

imperative in Tamil

அதிகாரமான, கட்டாயமான, தவிர்க்க முடியாத, கட்டளை இடுகிற, ஏவலைக் குறிக்கிற

imperative in Urdu

imperative
ازحد ضروری azhad zarurī

imperative in Bengali

essential
জরুরি joruri, অত্যন্ত গুরুত্বপূর্ণ ottonto guruttopurno

imperative in Malayalam

അടിയന്തിരമായ, ആജ്ഞാപിക്കുന്ന, ആദേശകം, ആധികാരികം
More languagesFewer languages
imperative in Kannada
ವಿಧಿ vidhi
imperative in Tagalog
pautos
imperative in Arabic
أَسَاسِيّ ʔasāsiyy, ضَرُورِيّ ḍarūriyy
imperative in Persian
دستوری dasturi

Examples of imperative in a sentence

  • It's imperative that he reads and understands it.2019, Con Man Games, SmashGames, quoting Felix, Kindergarten 2, SmashGames:
  • The new imperative for investment is the Government's objective to secure carbon-neutral transport emissions by 2040.2020 December 2, Industry Insider, “The costs of cutting carbon”, in Rail, page 76:

All 40 example sentences with imperative

Synonyms of imperative

Antonyms

Forms of imperative

Adjective
comparativemore imperative
superlativemost imperative
alternative abbreviationimp.
alternative abbreviationimper.
Noun
pluralimperatives

Plural of imperative: imperatives

Origin of imperative

Borrowed from Latin imperātīvus.

Words formed from imperative

Phrases with imperative

Questions about imperative

What does imperative mean?
Imperative means essential; crucial; extremely important.
What is imperative in Tamil?
Imperative in Tamil is அதிகாரமான, கட்டாயமான, தவிர்க்க முடியாத. See Imperative meaning in Tamil.
How do you use imperative in a sentence?
It's imperative that he reads and understands it.
What part of speech is imperative?
Imperative can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce imperative?
Imperative is pronounced /ɪmˈpɛɹ.ə.tɪv/ (UK).

Words near imperative in the dictionary

  1. imperate
  2. imperated
  3. imperation
  4. imperations
  5. imperatival
  6. imperative
  7. imperative language
  8. imperative languages
  9. imperative mandate
  10. imperative mood
  11. imperative moods

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: imperative (page history and authors); imperative (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ازحد ضروری (Urdu) (page history and authors); imperative (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ವಿಧಿ (Kannada) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “imperative.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/imperative. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.