accusative

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English acusatif, also accusatif,^[2][3] borrowed from Anglo-Norman acusatyf, also accusatif,^[4][3][5] and directly borrowed from Latin accūsātīvus,^[4][5][6] short for cāsus accūsātīvus, the case of accusing.^[6][5][7] The Anglo-Norman word is recorded from 1163–70.^[8] The Latin adjective is formed from the past participial stem of accūsō (“to call to account, accuse”),^[4][6][2] from ad (“with regard to”) and causa (“a cause; a lawsuit”).^[6] It rests on a mistranslation of Ancient Greek αἰτιατικός (aitiatikós),^[4][2][9][7] which with πτῶσις (ptôsis, “case”)^[7][10] named the case of that which is caused or directly affected by the verb.^[4][6][2] The Greek adjective comes from αἰτία (aitía), which means both "cause" and "accusation",^[6][7][2] and the Latin grammarians took it as "of accusing", as if from αἰτιᾶσθαι (aitiâsthai, “to accuse”).^[4][6] Etymonline and Klein add that the accurate rendering would have been cāsus causātīvus,^[6][7] and Dictionary.com instead analyses the ending as a combining form of causātīvus, with the word a loan translation.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The object case in grammar: about 1400, as noun and adjective, in a Middle English grammatical text.^[4] Barnhart's first date is about 1434,^[12][5] and Etymonline's the mid-15th century.^[6] The Latin word had already appeared in English contexts, in Ælfric's Old English Grammar.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The word has been a term of grammar from its first appearance, and its Romance counterparts too are earliest and chiefly grammatical.^[4] Hoad and the Shorter Oxford define the case as expressing chiefly destination or the goal of motion, and so the object as the destination of the verb's action.^[10][13] Johnson (1755) described it as the relation of the noun on which the action implied in the verb ends.^[14] From 1625, in Mason's grammar of English, the adjective could also be used of the object relation in a language without full inflections, as a synonym of objective.^[4][13] A separate rare use, drawing directly on accuse, is "accusing", recorded from before 1475 in the Ludus Coventriae.^[4][13] The adjective accusatival appears in the mid-19th century.^[13] Etymonline points out that French, Spanish and Italian nouns and adjectives were generally formed from the accusative of a Latin word, and that English borrowed heavily from those languages.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 1400 – the accusative case, as noun and adjective.^[4]
• c. 1434 – a word in the accusative case.^[4][5]
• before 1475 – accusing, accusatory.^[4]
• 1625 – relating to the accusative or to the objective relation.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of a grammatical case: marking typically the direct object of a verb or the object of certain prepositions.^[2][9][3][4]
2. Of a word or word group: being the direct object, or standing in that case.^[3][4]
3. (rare) Accusing; accusatory.^{[13][2][9][4]}

Noun

1. The accusative case: In this sentence the pronoun takes the accusative.^[2][3][4]
2. A word or form in the accusative case.^[2][3][4][9]

Word family

• accusatively

Related words

• accuse
• accusation
• cause
• causative

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
3. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d e Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
9. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
12. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
13. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.