impetus.
Anything that impels; a stimulating factor.
Meaning & usage
Anything that impels; a stimulating factor.
The outbreak of World War II in 1939 gave a new impetus to receiver development.
A force, either internal or external, that impels; an impulse.
The force or energy associated with a moving body; a stimulus.
A principle of motive force, held as equivalent to weight times velocity by John Buridan, in an auxiliary theory of Aristotelian dynamics introduced by John Philoponus, describing projectile motion against gravity as linear until it transitions to a vertical drop and the intellectual precursor to the concepts of inertia, momentum and acceleration in classical mechanics.
An activity in response to a stimulus.
Where this word comes from
Borrowed from Latin impetus (“a rushing upon, an attack, assault, onset”), from impetō (“to rush upon, attack”), from in- (“upon”) + petō (“to seek, fall upon”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.