Cases in Grammar

The relations of a substantive toward the chief action of the sentence, expre ed by case endings, as in our "po e ive," or by prepositions like "of,” "from," etc. There were eight cases in the original In do European: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, ablative, instrumental, and the so-called vocative, which, however, is rarely distinguished from the nominative. See IN FLECTION.