Genitivus

Genitivus, commonly called the genitive, is a grammatical case used in many languages to express a relationship between two nouns. It is most often associated with possession, as in Latin domus patris, “the house of the father,” but it also marks part-whole (pars civitatis, a part of the city), origin or source, and various other relations such as description or content.

In Latin grammar, the genitive is one of the standard noun cases and its form varies with declension. Its functions include indicating possession, expressing partitive meaning, and marking other relational nuances between nouns. The exact interpretation of a genitive construction can depend on context and the governing noun, leading to categories such as possessive, partitive, and descriptive or qualitative genitives.

Outside Latin, the genitive is treated differently across languages. Some languages maintain a distinct genitive case with similar functions (for example German Genitiv or Russian genitive), while others rely on prepositional phrases or possessive constructions. In English, the genitive is typically realized through the possessive ’s or through of-phrases, as in “the father’s book” or “the color of the car.”

The term genitivus originates from Latin, where the case was named to reflect its function of expressing relational meaning between nouns. Modern grammars retain the term genitive or genitive case to describe this set of related syntactic functions across languages.