Imperative

The imperative mood is used for commands. In modern English, the infinitive form of the verb is used to give commands. So, 'Go to bed!', 'Save the whales', 'Eat your dinner'. It is the same as the second person present form of the verb, but without the pronoun 'you' as 'you go to bed' or 'you save the whales' woud be statements of fact and thus in the indicative mood.

In Old English, imperatives are inflected for number only. This means there is no past tense and there is one form for commands to individuals and another form for commands to groups. The singular form is usually the root of the verb (the infinitive without the -an ending), and the plural is usually identical to the present plural form of the verb. For example, ''Hier his word! - Listen to his words' and 'Fliemaþ þa wicingas! - Expell the Vikings!. The first example is commanding a single person and the second commanding a group.

Some singular imperatives have slightly different forms to the stem of the verb. For example, the singular imperative of 'lufian - to love' is 'lufa', the singular imperative of 'habban - to have' is 'hafa', and the singular imperative of 'don - to do' is 'do'. However, they are all short forms of the verb and will be easy to recognise from the verb conjugations you already know. Look at the table below to see the imperative form of several common verbs.

Two final things to remember with imperative verbs is that they are almost always at the start of a sentence or clause (as the subject is implied but not stated), and they almost always appear in texts as direct recorded speech.

You can practice imperatives below.

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