From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishinfinitivein‧fin‧i‧tive /ɪnˈfɪnətɪv/ ●●○ noun [countable] technical SLGin grammar, the basic form of a verb, used with ‘to’ in English. In the sentence ‘I want to watch television’, ‘to watch’ is an infinitive. → split infinitive
Examples from the Corpus
infinitive• Independently of any other verb, the bare infinitive here expresses an event as a possibility, a rejected possibility.• Given this shift, the appearance of to before the infinitive is not surprising.• The view of to proposed here allows one, furthermore, to account for the two major uses of the to infinitive.• The distinction between these two ways of conceiving permission accounts for the use of either the bare or the to infinitive here.• Bolinger does not mention it, but the opposite is also true: exclusively perceptual verbs refuse the to infinitive.• In some of its uses, the to infinitive evokes an event as non-realized or yet to be realized.Origin infinitive (1400-1500) Late Latin infinitivus, from Latin infinitus; because the verb is not limited by person or number 