motive
Pluralmotives
Verbmotives, motiving, motived
Pluralmotives
Formsmotives, motiving, motived
- 1A reason, feeling, or incentive that makes someone want to act in a particular way.
Investigators struggled to identify a plausible motive behind the anonymous donation.
Her motives for joining the committee were entirely selfless.
Similarmotivation
Note
People reach for this word when they doubt someone's good faith. In Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano (1947), kind behavior turns out to have motives "not entirely altruistic". Joe Biden recalls the advice never to attack another man's motive, because you cannot know it. Motives are questioned, suspected, and weighed for selflessness, and motivation is the close synonym when the focus is on the drive rather than the reason.
- 2A reason or cause that drives someone to commit a crime.
Prosecutors argued that financial gain was the defendant's motive.
Detectives looked for a motive linking the suspect to the victim.
Similarreason, motivation
Note
This is the detective's and the lawyer's question: why would this person do it? Criminal law keeps motive apart from intent. Intent is usually what must be proved, while motive is offered as circumstantial evidence pointing toward guilt. The usual frame is a motive for an act, as in his motive for burning down the cottage. Francis Beeding's Death Walks in Eastrepps (1931) narrows a case to "only one possible motive".
- 3Causing or able to produce motion; tending to move something.
The factory relied on water as its primary motive power.
Engineers studied the motive force generated by the expanding gas.
Similarmoving, kinetic, mobile, motile, movable
Note
Mostly met in fixed pairs like motive power and motive force, the phrases for whatever drives a machine or a process. Sir Thomas Browne's The Garden of Cyrus (1658) uses it more freely, writing of "the motive parts of animals": the thigh-bone, leg, and claws of birds. It does not take degrees, since nothing is more motive than something else.
- 4
- 5To prompt or drive someone to act through a motive or reason.
Curiosity can motive scientists to pursue difficult questions for years.
The reward motived the whole team to finish the project early.
Similarmotivate
Oppositediscourage, deter
Note
A verb made straight from the noun and always taking a direct object: something motives a person to act. Its forms drop the final e, giving motiving and motived. Its near twin is motivate, which carries the same sense of moving someone by a reason.
- 6Alternative form of motif.
The architect borrowed a classical motive for the building's facade.
Critics traced the recurring motive through all three movements of the symphony.
Note
Here is the same French word as motif in an older English spelling. In music it names a short melodic passage repeated through a work, like the cello motive the flutes imitate. In architecture and design it names a figure repeated in a pattern. Because it is spelled exactly like the "reason" meaning, only context separates them, which is why motif is now the standard choice.
- 7A party or other social gathering where people get together.
Half the year group turned up to his motive, and the DJ played until two in the morning.
She's hosting a motive for her birthday this weekend.
Note
A British party word that behaves exactly like party: you host a motive, go to one, or hear there is one at someone's place. Most readers know the "reason" meaning first, so the setting does the disambiguating. A time, a venue, a guest list or a DJ tells you a celebration is meant.
- 8A person's plans for the day or night.
The motive for Saturday is dinner in town, then a club if anyone's still awake.
Their motive for the evening fell apart when it started raining.
Similarplan
Note
This is close kin to the "party" meaning, but here the word names the plan rather than the event. It turns up in casual questions to a group, such as "What's the motive for tonight, lads?" It usually takes for and a time: the motive for Saturday, the motive for the evening. Asking what the motive is means asking what everyone is doing, not why.
Less common meanings
- 9An idea or message that makes one want to act, especially a divine prompting from a spiritual source.
there's something in a woman beyond all human delight; a magnetic virtue, a charming quality, an occult and powerful motive.
1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of MelancholyNote
The oldest shade of the word treats a motive as something that arrives from outside, a prompting sent rather than a reason held. Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy can still call a woman's charm "an occult and powerful motive", a hidden force that moves a person. Behind it lies Late Latin motivum, "moving cause". The sense is obsolete, and the everyday "reason" meaning has taken its place.
- 10A limb or other bodily organ capable of movement.
every joint and motive of her body
c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”Note
A Shakespearean rarity. In Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), the phrase "every joint and motive of her body" pairs it with joint, so a motive is simply a part of the body that moves. The sense is obsolete and rare. A modern writer would say limb or moving part, though the same idea lingers in the adjective of motive power.
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Practice
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Origin
From Middle English motif, borrowed via Anglo-Norman and Middle French motif, all going back to Late Latin motivum meaning 'motive, moving cause', the neuter form of motivus.