Impetus

How to spell impetus

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce impetus

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does impetus mean?

1. nounA force or stimulus that drives something forward or causes an activity to begin or progress more quickly.

Impetus in a sentence

• The merger gave fresh impetus to the company's expansion plans.

• Rising fuel costs provided the impetus for switching to electric vehicles.

Where does impetus come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes straight from the Latin impetus, which meant an attack, an assault, or a violent rush forward. It was built from the verb impetere, 'to rush upon' or 'to attack', formed from the prefix in-, here meaning 'towards' or 'upon', joined to petere, 'to seek, aim at, or rush at'. That same petere root quietly survives in a family of English words including 'petition', 'appetite', 'compete', and 'repeat', all of which carry a sense of seeking or striving after something. English adopted impetus in the seventeenth century, at first in the physical sense of the momentum carried by a moving body, and the meaning then softened into the everyday figurative idea of a driving force that gets something started or pushes it along. Because it keeps its original Latin -us ending rather than an English spelling, writers sometimes wrongly reach for 'impetous' or confuse it with the adjective 'impetuous'; remembering the seeking root pet helps fix the single t and the -us tail.

How the word is built

• im- (from in-: towards, upon)
• pet (from petere: to seek, rush at, attack)
• -us (Latin noun ending)