Verbs do more than locate events in time. Mood is a grammatical category that expresses the speaker’s attitude toward the status of a situation—as factual, hypothetical, commanded, wished, or doubted.

Indicative mood typically presents situations as real; subjunctive and related forms mark non-assertive or irrealis contexts; imperative mood encodes directives. Some languages elaborate many mood distinctions morphologically; English relies more on modal verbs and syntax.

Mood interacts with modality, tense, and aspect. Translation difficulties arise when mood systems fail to align. Descriptive grammars separate mood from related categories and illustrate each with authentic examples.

• Grammatical marking of speaker attitude toward a situation
• Includes indicative, subjunctive, imperative, and others
• Expressed by morphology or auxiliaries
• Closely related to modality