Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of, relating to, or being the grammatical case that is the direct object of a verb or the object of certain prepositions.
  • adjective Accusatory.
  • noun The accusative case.
  • noun A word or form in the accusative case.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Producing accusations; accusatory.
  • In grammar, noting especially the direct object of a verb, and to a considerable extent (and probably primarily) destination or goal of motion: applied to a case forming part of the original Indo-European declension (as of the case-systems of other languages), and retained as a distinct form by the older languages of the family, and by some of the modern.
  • noun Short for accusative case. See I., 2.

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

  • adjective Producing accusations; accusatory.
  • adjective (Gram.) Applied to the case (as the fourth case of Latin and Greek nouns) which expresses the immediate object on which the action or influence of a transitive verb terminates, or the immediate object of motion or tendency to, expressed by a preposition. It corresponds to the objective case in English.
  • noun (Gram.) The accusative case.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Producing accusations; accusatory; accusatorial; a manner that reflects a finding of fault or blame
  • adjective grammar Applied to the case (as the fourth case of Latin, Lithuanian and Greek nouns) which expresses the immediate object on which the action or influence of a transitive verb has its limited influence. Other parts of speech, including secondary or predicate direct objects, will also influence a sentence’s construction. In German the case used for direct objects.
  • noun grammar The accusative case.

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

  • adjective containing or expressing accusation
  • noun the case of nouns serving as the direct object of a verb
  • adjective serving as or indicating the object of a verb or of certain prepositions and used for certain other purposes

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English acusatif, from Old French, from Latin (cāsus) accūsātīvus, (case) of accusation (mistranslation of Greek aitiātikē (ptōsis), causal (case), (case) indicating the thing caused by the verb, from aitiā, cause, also accusation, charge), from accūsātus, past participle of accūsāre, to accuse; see accuse.]

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