Ingrammar, thenominative case (abbreviatedNOM),subjective case,straight case, orupright case is one of thegrammatical cases of anoun or other part of speech, which generally marks thesubject of averb, or (in Latin and formal variants of English) apredicative nominal or adjective, as opposed to itsobject, or otherverb arguments. Generally, the noun "that is doing something" is in the nominative, and the nominative is often the form listed in dictionaries.

The English wordnominative comes fromLatincāsus nominātīvus "case for naming",^[1] which was translated fromAncient Greek ὀνομαστικὴ πτῶσις,onomastikḗ ptôsis "inflection for naming",^[2] fromonomázō "call by name",^[3] fromónoma "name".^[4]Dionysius Thrax in hisThe Art of Grammar refers to it asorthḗ oreutheîa "straight",^[5] in contrast to theoblique or "bent" cases.

The reference form (more technically, theleastmarked) of certain parts of speech is normally in the nominative case, but that is often not a complete specification of the reference form, as the number and the gender may need to be specified. Thus, the reference or least marked form of an adjective might be the nominative masculine singular.

The parts of speech that are oftendeclined and therefore may have a nominative case are nouns, adjectives, pronouns and (less frequently) numerals and participles. The nominative case often indicates the subject of a verb but sometimes does not indicate any particular relationship with the other parts of a sentence. In some languages, the nominative case is unmarked, and it may then be said to be marked by anull morpheme. Moreover, in most languages with a nominative case, the nominative form is thelemma; that is, it is the reference form used to cite a word, to list it as a dictionary entry etc.

Nominative cases are found inAlbanian,Arabic,Estonian,Sanskrit,Slovak,Ukrainian,Hungarian,Lithuanian,Georgian,German,Latin,Greek,Icelandic,Old English,Old French,Polish,Serbian,Czech,Romanian,Russian andPashto, among other languages. English still retains some nominativepronouns, which are contrasted with theaccusative (comparable to theoblique ordisjunctive in some other languages):I (having the accusativeme),we (having the accusativeus),he (having the accusativehim),she (having the accusativeher),they (having the accusativethem) andwho (having the accusativewhom). A usage that isarchaic in most current English dialects is the singular second-person pronounthou (accusativethee). A special case is the wordyou: originally,ye was its nominative form andyou the accusative, but over time,you has come to be used for the nominative as well.

The term "nominative case" is most properly used in the discussion ofnominative–accusative languages, such as Latin, Greek and most modern Western European languages.

Inactive–stative languages, there is a case, sometimes called nominative, that is themost marked case and is used for the subject of atransitive verb or a voluntary subject of anintransitive verb but not for an involuntary subject of an intransitive verb. Since such languages are a relatively new field of study, there is no standard name for this case.

English is now often described as having asubjective case, instead of a nominative, to draw attention to the differences between the "standard" generic nominative and the way that it is used in English.^{[6][7][8][9][10]} The termobjective case is then used for theoblique case, which covers the roles of accusative, dative and objects of a preposition. Thegenitive case is then usually called thepossessive form, rather than a noun caseper se. English is then said to have two cases: the subjective and the objective.

The nominative case marks the subject of a verb. When the verb is active, the nominative is the person or thing doing the action (agent); when the verb is passive, the nominative is the person or thing receiving the action.

• The boy saw her.
• She was seen by the boy.

Incopular sentences, the nominative is used for both subject and predicate.

• Socrates wasa wise man.
• Socrates waswise.