Subjunctive mood

In grammar, the subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a verb mood that exists in many languages. It typically expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), emotion, possibility, judgement, necessity, and statements that are contrary to fact at present. The details of subjunctive use vary from language to language.

The subjunctive in English

The subjunctive in Modern English is easily distinguished in a great variety of contexts where the sense is past tense, but the form of the subjunctive verb required is present: "It was required that we go to the back of the line." Were it not subjunctive, the form of "to go" for something in the past would have been went. Compare with the non-subjunctive: "Everyone knows that we went to the back of the line."

Other than the verb to be, the past subjunctive was distinguishable from the past indicative in Early Modern English in the second-person singular. For example: indicative thou sattest, but subjunctive thou sat.

In some texts that use the pronoun thou, a final -est or -st is sometimes added; for example, thou beest appears frequently in the work of Shakespeare and some of his contemporaries. Present indicative Present subjunctive Past indicative Past subjunctive
to own
(regular verb) I own
he/she/it owns
we own
you own
they own I own
he/she/it own
we own
you own
they own I owned
he/she/it owned
we owned
you owned
they owned I owned
he/she/it owned
we owned
you owned
they owned
to be I am
he/she/it is
we are
you are
they are I be
he/she/it be
we be
you be
they be I was
he/she/it was
we were
you were
they were I were
he/she/it were
we were
you were
they were


As shown in the above table, the form of the subjunctive is distinguishable from the indicative in only three circumstances:
in the third person singular of the present tense,
with the verb to be in the present tense, and
in the first person singular and third person singular of verb to be in the past tense.

Additionally, the modal auxiliaries do not have present subjunctive forms.