hortativo

Hortativo, or hortative mood, is a grammatical mood used to express exhortation, invitation, or encouragement to perform an action. It is typically associated with urging a group to act, especially in first-person plural formations such as “let us …,” but it can also appear in other persons depending on the language and construction. The hortative is distinct from the imperative, which gives direct commands, and from the optative, which expresses wishes.

In languages with a dedicated hortative form, the mood encodes the speaker’s urging through specific morphology or particles. In languages that do not have a distinct hortative, exhortation is achieved by periphrastic constructions or through the subjunctive or jussive moods. English relies on let-clauses like “Let us begin” or “Let him go” to convey hortative force, while many Romance languages use periphrastic or contractual equivalents such as colligated forms with the verb vamos in some varieties for inclusive exhortation.

The hortative is documented in classical grammatical traditions, including Latin and Greek, where it is described as a way to invite or urge action by the speaker and others. In modern grammars, it is often treated as a functional category—an exhortative use of mood or construction—rather than a universally distinct, standalone morphology across all languages.

Etymology and related terms: the word derives from Latin hortativus, from hortari “to exhort.” Related notions include the jussive, the imperative, and the optative, with hortativity primarily focusing on inclusive prompting or invitation to act. See also mood, subjunctive, and periphrastic constructions expressing exhortation.