direct case

direct case (plural direct cases)

1. (grammar) A noun case (usually the nominative case, and sometimes the vocative case) where the noun can be the agent or patient of transitive verbs or the argument of intransitive verbs.
   • 1817, Peter Edmund Laurent, An introduction to the study of German grammar; with practical exercises., London, p.13:

     19. Cases of Nouns are six: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Vocative, and Ablative. As in the Latin and Greek languages, these cases are derived from the Nominative by certain rules of inflection; the Nominative being the root of all the other cases, is termed the direct case, the others are called oblique cases.

• oblique case

• Thesaurus:grammatical case