Word.ws English Dictionary

percontative

percontative adjective: that is, expressed in, or having the character of the grammatical mood (mode) of rhetorical questioning; percontatorial.

Adjective

percontative (not comparable)

  1. (rare) That is, expressed in, or having the character of the grammatical mood (mode) of rhetorical questioning; percontatorial.
    • Some [grammatical writers] call these affections of the verb moods; others call them divisions, qualities, states, species, &c.; and as to the various appellations of each mood we have the personative and impersonative, the indicative, declarative, definitive, modus finiendi, modus fatendi, the...1845, Edward Smedley, Hugh James Rose, and Henry John Rose [eds.], Encyclopædia Metropolitana I: “Universal Grammar and Philology”, pages 50–51
    • ‘Perfect Dicibles are of various sorts: Interrogative; Percontative; Adjurative; Optative; Imprecative; Execrative; Substitutive; Compellative; Hypothetical; and, lastly, Dubious.’1849, Herman Melville, Mardi II (1922 reprint), page 285

Origin of percontative

From the Latin percontativus.

Questions about percontative

What does percontative mean?
Percontative means that is, expressed in, or having the character of the grammatical mood (mode) of rhetorical questioning; percontatorial.
What part of speech is percontative?
Percontative is an adjective.

Words near percontative in the dictionary

  1. percomorphacean
  2. percomorphaceans
  3. percomorphs
  4. percontation
  5. percontations
  6. percontative
  7. percontatorial
  8. perconvol
  9. percophid
  10. percophids
  11. percopsid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: percontative (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.

Last updated:

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