CASE, in grammar, a form, modification or inflection of a noun or pronoun, indicating or corresponding to its relationship to some other word or words in a phrase or sentence, as, John (nominative case) speaks; John's (possessive) dog harks; John beats his dog (objective). In adjectives, case is merely sym pathetic, the adjective agreeing in case with the noun which it qualifies. In English, nouns undergo only one inflection representing a dif ferent case from the nominative or general form of the noun; all other cases are repre sented either by prepositions or by the posi tion of the noun in the sentence, the nominative case usually preceding the verb, the objective or accusative following it. The single in flected case in English is the possessive or geni tive (John's). English pronouns have three cases—nominative, genitive and accusative, as ht, his, him. The last often serves as a dative. Adjectives undergo no modifications in Eng lish. In Sanskrit there are eight cases — nomi native, accusative, instrumental, dative, geni tive, ablative, locative and vocative. In Latin there are six cases — nominative, genitive. dative, accusative, vocative, ablative. In Greek there are five, the ablative not being used. In both Latin and Greek there are traces of a locative case. In French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, the nouns have no case-inflections. In German both nouns and adjectives are in flected for case. There are four cases in Ger man— nominaive, genitive, dative, accusative.
In law, the word has various meanings. An "action upon the case° is one in which damages are sued for, for some cause of complaint where the injury done is not direct, as in but consequential. A "case stated" is a state ment prepared by one court for the decision of a point of law by a superior court. A °special case° is a written statement of facts agreed on by two or more litigants in an action, in order that a court may decide their legal effect In the United States the term is used in brief for "case on appeal," meaning the statement laid before a court of appeal by an appellant and presenting the complete record of the original trial in the lower court. Thus the appellate
court is allowed to review the findings as well as the points of law involved and here case differs from a °bill of exceptions" in which points of law only are submitted for the con sideration of the appeal court. "Case reserved° is a statement drawn by counsel and certified by the judge, to be used as a basis for argu ment on points of law before a full bench of the court.
In letter-press printing, a case is a receptacle for types, generally made of wood, 34 inches long, 15 inches wide and PA inches deep, and divided into compartments or "boxes," each of which contains types of one class or letter. A pair of cases consists of an upper and a lower case; the upper one has 98 boxes, and contains the capitals, small capitals and some other signs that are only occasionally required in com position; the lower one has 54 boxes, and holds the letters of the small characters, figures, spaces and most of the points. Thus the small characters are habitually spoken of by printers as "lower-case" letters, and the capitals, etc., as "upper-case" letters. The places assigned to the several letters of the alphabet in the boxes of the case are not precisely the same in all printing-offices, but the differences are few. The different sizes of the boxes in the lower case depend upon the comparative frequency with which the several letters occur in the com position, and the position in the case allotted to each letter is such as to afford the greatest fa cility in composing. The letter e, which is most run upon in the English language, has a box much larger than of the other compart ments, and is placed directly in front of the compositor. In the upper case the boxes arc of uniform size, and the letters are placed in nearly alphabetical order, the comparatively rare oc currence of capitals rendering it less important which letter is nearest the compositor's hand. Cases are mounted in a slanting position upon a frame of convenient height.