# impetus

Pronunciation: say "IM-puh-tuhs" /ˈɪm.pə.təs/

## Noun

1. The force or energy that a body in motion carries, or more generally anything that acts as a stimulus.
   - Simple: The force a moving thing has that keeps it going, or anything that pushes something on.
   - _The runaway cart kept rolling under its own impetus until it hit the fence._
   - _The factory closure gave fresh impetus to the campaign for new local jobs._

## Other meanings

- (noun) In medieval physics, a principle of motive force within Aristotelian dynamics, introduced by John Philoponus and equated by John Buridan with weight times velocity; a precursor of inertia, momentum, and acceleration.

## Origin

The verb impetō ("to rush upon, attack"), a compound of in- ("upon") and petō ("to seek, fall upon"), produced the Latin noun impetus. In Latin that noun meant "an attack, assault, onset" or "a rushing upon," and English borrowed it unchanged.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/impetus (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).