Word Finder - motive

definition

An idea or communication that makes one want to act, especially from spiritual sources; a divine prompting.

definition

An incentive to act in a particular way; a reason or emotion that makes one want to do something; anything that prompts a choice of action.

synonyms

• motivation

definition

A limb or other bodily organ that can move.

definition

Something which causes someone to want to commit a crime; a reason for criminal behaviour.

example

No-one could understand why she had hidden the shovel; her motives were obscure at best.

definition

A motif.

definition

A motif; a theme or subject, especially one that is central to the work or often repeated.

example

If you listen carefully, you can hear the flutes mimicking the cello motive.

definition

To prompt or incite by a motive or motives; to move.

synonyms

• motivate

definition

Causing motion; having power to move, or tending to move

example

a motive argument

synonyms

• moving

definition

Relating to motion and/or to its cause

synonyms

• motional

She hadn't thought about his feelings or motive to help.

There was a practical motive for using this weapon.

She wanted to find, and still seeks, some secret motive in our actions.

In these, however, the religious was avowedly subordinate to a political motive, viz.

While she despised the man, her feelings still lacked a motive to sever his rope in cold blood and watch him plummet down to the rocks and churning river below.

She sure had a top-notch motive.

Electricity as a motive power for cranes is of more recent introduction.

Katie had her questioning his every motive.

Steam is an extremely useful motive power for all cranes that are not worked off a central power station.

Yet, if the motive is forbidden us, it is plain from another point of view that good persons ought to be happy.

A committee was formed on the 22nd of May 1787 for the abolition of the slave trade, under the presidency of Granville Sharp. It is unquestionable that the principal motive power which originated and sustained their efforts was Christian principle and feeling.

Another motive for multiplying the number of graves operated when the cubiculum contained the remains of any noted saint or martyr.

If this machinery is to act smoothly we must improve our motive power, the source of which is human passion and sentiment.

Aquinas regards the souls of men, like the angels, as immaterial forms; and he includes in the soul-unit, so to speak, not merely the anima rationalis of Aristotle, but also the vegetative, sensitive, appetitive and motive functions.

But though reaction was the motive power of this new machinery of government, it could not do away with many of the practical and obvious improvements of 1848, and it was not blind to some of the indispensable requirements of a.

Its real motive force was supplied by Ljudevit Gaj, who combined to a remarkable degree the qualities of author, philologist and political agitator.

Turning to the ideal, in works entirely modern in motive and treatment, Hamo Thornycroft produced " The Mower " (1884) and " A Sower " (1886); the " Stanley Memorial " in the old church at Holyhead partakes of the same character.

The selection of his subject and the order in which it is treated are determined by this motive.

Zaire, among those where love is admitted as a principal motive, and Merope, among those where this motive is excluded and kept in subordination, yield to no plays of their classe in such interest as is possible on the model, in stage effect and in uniform literary merit.

Its motive was borrowed to some extent from Othello, but that matters little.

Opposed to the motive force producing the air current is the frictional resistance developed in passing through the mine workings.

After about five years' residence he left without taking a degree, travelled abroad, and in Switzerland imbibed or strengthened those religious principles and that hostility to the Laudian church which were to be the chief motive in his future political career.

Many of the factories derive their motive power from the falls of a mountain torrent known as the Salto de las Aguas.

All their endeavours have obtained at best but a doubtful success, for they have overlooked the fact that to evaporate a given weight of water from the syrup in a vacuum pan at least an equal weight (or in practice about 15% more) of steam must be condensed, and the first cost of mechanical agitators, together with the expenditure they involve for motive power and maintenance, must be put against the slight saving in the heating surface effected by their employment.

Its fundamental motive is the serious consideration, in a continuous and concrete manner, of that union of philosophy and history which had been glimpsed by earlier thinkers, but had hitherto been pursued in a manner more or less capricious.

Steam is employed as motive power when it is necessary to plough large areas in a short time.

The relative weakness of territorial power in the North, after the fall of Henry the Lion of Saxony, diminished without however removing this motive for union, but the comparative immunity from princely aggression on land left the towns freer to combine in a stronger and more permanent union for the defence of their commerce by sea and for the control of the Baltic.

The main motive for irradiating food is a financial one.

The only motive for advocating it is the prejudice of absolute idealism which would deny that sensation has any part whatever in the constitution of experience.

Associating the nude solely with the performance of menial tasks, he deemed it worse than a solecism to transfer such subjects to his canvas, and thus a wide field of- motive was closed to him.

The originality of the motive did not prevent the adoption of all the Chinese conventions, and of some new ones of the artists own.

The first difficulty was to make it sufficiently light in relation to the power its machinery could develop; and several machines were built in which trials were made of steam, and of compressed air and carbonic acid gas as motive agents.

So the practice of securing places for persons who have served the party, in however humble a capacity, has sprung from the maxim that in the strife of politics the spoils belong to the victors, and has furnished a motive of incomparable and ever-present activity ever since the administration (1829-1837) of President Andrew Jackson.

Practically all the cities' and large towns have electric tramways, and electricity is also used as a motive power on many lines uniting the larger cities with the surrounding towns and villages.

Interpolation then always has a motive.

The most frequent motive is the removal of some difficulty in the sense, expression or metre of the text, and especially obvious gaps or corruptions which the interpolator endeavours to fill or to heal.

This alone should acquit him of any base motive; his conduct was "throughout open and straightforward" (Stubbs).

And, since the strongest motive in the pilgrimage was the acquisition of indulgences, unnumbered thousands were moved to assume the Cross, when, in 1095, Urban II.

One particular god may be eminent enough, like Zeus, to rise above all others, and supply cultivated thought with a name for the supreme power; and this may be strengthened by the national motive as in the case of Israel.

The common Australian "opossum" or phalanger (Trichosurus vulpecula) has been naturalized in New Zealand, although very destructive to fruit trees; the value of its fur being probably the motive.

Whatever the motive, the act itself was highly appreciated by Suleiman, and became the means of cementing a recently concluded peace between the two monarchs.

Its motive was not cosmological or metaphysical, but religious and historical.

What, however, was probably the most powerful motive of the Great Trek was the equality established by the British between the black and white races.

Summing up, it may be said that the exasperation caused by just grievances unremedied was no stronger a motive with the trekkers than the desire to be free from the restraints imposed on British subjects and the wish to be able to deal with the natives after their own fashion.

Its central motive is to prove that all the objections raised against revealed or supernatural religion apply with equal force to the whole constitution of nature, and that the general analogy between the principles of divine government, as set forth by the biblical revelation, and those observable in the course of nature, leads us to the warrantable conclusion that there is one Author of both.

By a partition, the motive of which is not quite certain, the districts south of the Forth and Clyde were erected into an earldom for Alexander's younger brother, David.

It is too motive, too full of ingenious contrivances, to be really Greek.

The chief motive for these accusations was no doubt the desire of amassing wealth,' since by the law of majestas one-fourth of the goods of the accused, even if he committed suicide in order to avoid confiscation (which was always carried out in the case of those condemned to capital punishment), was assured to the accuser (who was hence called quadruplator).

The motive which a writer of satire must have had for secrecy under Domitian is sufficiently obvious; and the necessity of concealment and self-suppression thus imposed upon the writer may have permanently affected his whole manner of composition.

But it would be hardly true to say that the animating motive of his satire was political.