gladne

Gladne is a form of the adjective gladan, used in Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian to mean hungry. It is the feminine plural nominative form, typically used to describe multiple females who are hungry, or as a predicative adjective referring to a feminine plural subject. The base word gladan derives from a common Slavic root related to hunger and need.

In grammar, gladan and its inflected forms follow the standard South Slavic adjective declension. The masculine singular is gladan, the feminine singular is gladna, the neuter singular is gladno, the masculine plural is gladni, and the feminine plural is gladne. When placed before a noun, gladne agrees with a feminine plural noun, as in gladne djevojke (hungry girls). When used predicatively, it also agrees with the subject, for example: Djevojke su gladne. (The girls are hungry.)

Usage and nuance: gladne is common in everyday speech to describe hunger in a non-specific or general sense, or to attribute the quality to a group of females. It can appear in literature, conversation, and media, particularly in contexts involving food, travel, or instruction about meals and hunger.

Etymology and cognates: The form gladan is cognate with related words for hunger in other Slavic languages, reflecting a shared Proto-Slavic root. Similar terms appear across the region, with corresponding gendered and number forms.