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Definition
essential and urgentor more rarely: (in grammar) a sentence that expresses a command or request
- But now, it is imperative that you understand why you cannot let Levana take you.Marissa Meyer -- Cinder
- In pondering how this disaster could have occurred, it is imperative to remember that lucid thought is all but impossible at 29,000 feet.Jon Krakauer -- Into Thin Air
- That's what he thought of every time he left Gabby for the day, but now the notion struck him as imperative.Nicholas Sparks -- The Choice
- No, the order is imperative.Alexandre Dumas -- The Three Musketeers
- It was imperative that everything be relocated to a safe distance before the bio-bomb went in.Eoin Colfer -- Artemis Fowl
- Inferior Federal Courts ImperativeAlexander Hamilton, James Madison, & John Jay -- The Federalist Papers — Modern English Edition 2
- Dear Mrs. Humphrey: I write in haste, having been summoned home most urgently by a family matter which it is imperative I respond to at once.Margaret Atwood -- Alias Grace
- It was imperative that the movie capture the public's imagination.James Bradley -- Flags of Our Fathers
- It was imperative I should see you this evening.Henrik Ibsen -- Hedda Gabler
- Men stepped forth to hail cabs or cars, raising their fingers in varied forms of polite request or imperative demand.Stephen Crane -- Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
- It is imperative: no atomic device must be detonated around the organisms.Michael Crichton -- The Andromeda Strain
- Then came a man's voice, angry and imperative: "Open up or we'll break the door in!"F. Scott Fitzgerald -- This Side of Paradise
- In other words, there is a time imperative, a sort of urgency as the sands run out.Thomas C. Foster -- How to Read Literature Like a Professor
- But it could do no good, and might make her still worse; and he saw that it was imperative to get her home at once.Thomas Hardy -- Jude the Obscure
- You are so impatient, sir, you would come at the infinitive mood before you can get to the imperative.Henry Fielding -- Tom Jones
- It was imperative to find the humor again.J.D. Robb -- Immortal in Death
- According to William P. Foley II, the chairman of the company that owns Carl's Jr., the basic imperative of today's fast food industry is "Grow or die."Eric Schlosser -- Fast Food Nation
- But when Adam had made up his mind to a measure, he was not the man to renounce it for any but imperative reasons.George Eliot -- Adam Bede
- It was imperative to be as close as possible to put in motion the strategy that was rapidly coming into focus.Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Identity
- Imperative mood, present tense: Do not thou go home, let him not go home, let us not go home, do not ye or you go home, let not them go home.Charles Dickens -- Great Expectations