1. plural of dative; the grammatical case in inflected languages that typically marks the indirect object of a verb or the object of certain prepositions.
Usage: linguistics; grammar
2. plural of dative; words or noun phrases in the dative case.
Usage: linguistics

Examples

• In Latin, datives are used to indicate the indirect object of a sentence.
• German datives often appear after certain prepositions like 'mit' and 'zu'.
• The teacher explained how datives function differently across Romance languages.
• Students learning Russian must master the use of datives in their grammar studies.
• In the sentence, the datives show who receives the action indirectly.