Indicative

How to spell indicative

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce indicative

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does indicative mean?

1. adjectiveServing as a sign or suggestion of something; pointing to a likely conclusion.
2. adjectiveDenoting the verb mood used to state a fact or ask a question, as opposed to the imperative or subjunctive.

Indicative in a sentence

• The rising sales figures are indicative of a healthy market.

• In the sentence 'she writes daily', the verb sits in the indicative mood.

• Her calm response was indicative of years of experience.

• The textbook contrasts the indicative with the subjunctive in a clear table.

Where does indicative come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin indicativus, meaning 'serving to point out' or 'declarative', which was built on the verb indicare, 'to point out, show, or make known'. That verb in turn joined the prefix in-, 'toward', to dicere, 'to say or speak', so the literal idea is of speaking toward something in order to single it out. Roman grammarians used indicativus for the verb mood that simply states a fact, as opposed to commanding or supposing, and English inherited that technical grammatical sense in the late 1400s. The broader everyday meaning, 'serving as a sign of', grew naturally from the same notion of pointing something out. The shared dicere root links indicative to a large family of relatives such as 'dictate', 'predict', 'verdict', and 'index', and remembering the 'dic' core (as in 'indicate') helps fix the spelling of the unstressed second vowel.

How the word is built

• in- (toward)
• dic (root of dicere: to say, point out)
• -at(e)
• -ive (adjective suffix forming 'tending to')