imperative vs optional

imperative

noun
  • A verb in imperative mood. 

  • The grammatical mood expressing an order (see jussive). In English, the imperative form of a verb is the same as that of the bare infinitive. 

  • An essential action, a must: something which is imperative. 

adj
  • Having semantics that incorporates mutable variables. 

  • Expressing a command; authoritatively or absolutely directive. 

  • Essential; crucial; extremely important. 

  • Of, or relating to the imperative mood. 

optional

noun
  • In various programming languages, a kind of variable that is assigned a specific data type but may or may not hold an actual value. 

  • Something that is not compulsory, especially part of an academic course. 

adj
  • Not compulsory; left to personal choice; elective. 

How often have the words imperative and optional occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )