Instrumental case

The instrumental case (abbreviated INS or INSTR) is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action. The noun may be either a physical object or an abstract concept.

The instrumental case appears in this Russian sentence:

Here, the inflection of the noun indicates its instrumental role – the nominative перо changes its ending to become пером.

Modern English expresses the instrumental meaning by use of adverbial phrases that begin with the words with, by, or using then followed by the noun indicating the instrument:

Technical descriptions often use the phrase "by means of", which is similar to "by use of", as in:

This can be replaced by "via", which is a Latin ablative of the nominative (viā) via, meaning road, route, or way. In the ablative this means by way of.

The instrumental case appears in Old English, Old Saxon, Georgian, Armenian, Basque, Sanskrit, and the Balto-Slavic languages. An instrumental/comitative case is arguably present in Turkish and other Altaic languages, as well as in Tamil. Also, Uralic languages reuse the adessive case where available, locative case if not, to mark the same category, or comitative case (Estonian). For example, the Finnish kirjoitan kynällä does not mean "I write on a pen", but "I write using a pen", even if the adessive -llä is used. In Ob-Ugric languages, the same category may also mark agents with verbs that use an ergative alignment, like "I give you, using a pen".

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