If you study English grammar, you likely know that verbs have present, past, and future tenses that we use to express when something happens. While most English speakers know about tenses, there is a much less commonly known grammatical aspect of verbs: moods. In grammar, a verb mood is used to express a specific attitude. We hope we didn’t ruin your good mood by bringing up this rarely discussed part of English grammar!
Compared to other languages, the English verb moods aren’t talked about much and rarely appear in school lesson plans. In fact, most English speakers use grammatical moods without even knowing they exist. Let’s see if we can improve the mood of the oft-ignored English moods by letting them briefly introduce themselves.
What is a mood?
In grammar, a mood is an inflection of a verb used to express a specific attitude or intent of a speaker. Depending on the language, verb moods can be used to express specific ideas, such as probability, doubt, or hesitancy.
According to most sources, the English language has at least three verb moods and may have as many as five. Compared to other languages, English moods are relatively simple, and many English speakers use moods without knowing what they are.
The three main verb moods used in English and many other languages are the indicative, imperative, and subjunctive moods. Some sources also state that English has an interrogative and conditional mood as well, but these two moods are just as often said to be subtypes of one of the main moods or even types of clauses rather than moods.
Let’s briefly look at each of these English verb moods and check out how we typically use them.
Indicative mood
The indicative mood is by far the most commonly used mood in English and the mood you are most familiar with even if you don’t realize it.
The indicative mood is the mood used to express facts or state opinions as if they were facts. All of the present, past, and future verb tenses can (and usually are) expressed using the indicative mood. The indicative mood is essentially the default mood we use unless we specifically need a different one. This being the case, the vast majority of sentences you say or write will use the indicative mood.
Indicative mood examples
- Grass is green.
- It rained yesterday.
- I will become a celebrity chef next year.
Interrogative mood
The interrogative mood is used to ask questions. In English, interrogative sentences end in question marks and usually contain both an auxiliary verb (helping verb) and a main verb. Often, an interrogative sentence begins with the auxiliary verb and follows with the main verb later in the sentence.
Because interrogative sentences are often just rearranged versions of sentences that use the indicative mood, the interrogative mood is often said to be a subtype of the indicative mood or described as a type of sentence or clause rather than a distinct mood.
Interrogative mood examples
- Can you hear that?
- What do raccoons eat?
- This costs how much?
There are many ways to ask questions. Here’s how to elicit an answer beyond a “yes” or a “no.”
Imperative mood
The imperative mood is the mood used to issue commands, requests, directions, and similar ideas.
A sentence using the imperative mood, known as an imperative sentence, typically follows a specific structure: the base form of a verb is used without a stated subject. The subject of an imperative sentence is an implied you—the you being the person(s) that the speaker/writer is addressing. Imperative sentences often use exclamation marks to express importance, emotion, or urgency.
Imperative mood examples
- Run!
- Please sit down.
- Drive six miles and then take the left after the hospital.
Subjunctive mood
The subjunctive mood is the most complicated—and least commonly used—of English’s three main verb moods. In general, the subjunctive mood is used to express hypothetical situations, wishes, doubts, and demands.
The subjunctive mood uses particular verb conjugation rules depending on what the subject and verb of the sentence are. In general, plural subjects use the same verbs as they normally would. However, things get more complicated if you have a first or third person singular subject (like I, he, she, or it) or use the verb be. For example, third person singular subjects drop the -s that would normally be used at the end of a verb.
- We proposed that Sasha sing in our band because she had such a great voice. (Not sings.)
In English, the subjunctive mood is now much less commonly used than it was in the past. The subjunctive mood has been steadily declining in both spoken and written usage, and it often sounds unnatural even to native English speakers. If you’d like to learn more about the oddity that is the English subjunctive mood, you can learn a lot more about it in our detailed exploration of the subjunctive mood.
Subjunctive mood examples
- If I were rich, I’d party all day and night.
- The manager asked that her staff be prepared for a morning rush.
- Natalie’s tutor suggests that she learn French before moving to Paris.
Conditional mood
The conditional mood is used to express ideas that depend on conditions. The conditional mood typically uses verbs like would, could, and should together with the word if or when.
In English, the conditional mood is not always listed as a separate mood, and when it is, it is often considered to be a subtype of the subjunctive mood.
Conditional mood examples
- I wouldn’t do that if I were you.
- If she could have eaten the cake, she would have.
- If I were a clown, I would join the circus.
English vs. other languages
Many English speakers are often introduced to moods for the first time when they learn another language. In English, verb moods are used more simply and less commonly compared to many other languages. Both the indicative mood and imperative mood have few rules, and the subjunctive mood is often avoided entirely due to a common aversion to it.
All three of the indicative, imperative, and subjunctive moods are also used in most other languages. Spanish, for example, also uses these three moods. Like English, Spanish uses the indicative mood as the default mood to discuss truths and objective facts, and it is typically the mood that is taught first.
Also like English, Spanish uses the imperative mood to express commands. Unlike English’s simple imperative mood, though, the Spanish imperative mood has different rules regarding verb conjugation depending on formality, negative requests, and who is being spoken to. The Spanish subjunctive mood is both more common and much more complex than the English subjunctive mood is.
Other Romance languages, like French, Italian, and Portuguese, also use the subjunctive mood much more commonly than English does, and this mood has complex verb conjugation rules.
When we look at even more languages, we often find verb moods that aren’t even present in English. Some examples of these missing English moods include:
- optative mood: used to express wishes.
- jussive mood: used to express commands in specific situations.
- potential mood: used to express probability and potential.
- desiderative mood: used to express a desire to do something.
- volitive mood: used to express permission.
Instead of functioning with so many different moods, English often relies on modal auxiliary verbs like can, may, might, must, should, will, and would to express the mood of a verb. For example, English doesn’t have a specific mood to express permission; instead, the modal verbs can and may are typically combined with other verbs to perform this role.
