Home › Glossary › Letter D

Desiderative form

Concept
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A poetic expression of longing, desire, or wish, often using subjunctive mood

Detailed Definition
Desiderative form in poetry expresses longing, yearning, or desire through grammatical constructions, lexical choices, or syntactic patterns that convey unfulfilled wishes; often using subjunctive mood, conditional verbs, or repeated invocations (e.g., “O that I might…”), it imbues the verse with emotional tension and aspirational energy, central to elegiac or romantic traditions.
Example
Example in poetry:
Verbs expressing desire, as in Catullus 70: “My woman says there’s no one she’d rather marry than me”; The Latin desiderative “aurit” (wants to hear) used in classical poetry; In English, phrases like “would that I could fly” in Romantic odes; Modern example: “I ache to touch the sky” in Lucille Clifton’s spiritual longing
Additional Notes
Desiderative form expresses longing or desire, often through subjunctive mood or optative phrasing (“would that...”); common in odes and elegies.
Also Known As
Wish-form Longing syntax Optative mode Desire-inflected verse Desiring tense Longing mode Wishing mood
Skip to main content