Motivation

How to spell motivation

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce motivation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does motivation mean?

1. nounThe inner drive or reason that makes someone want to act and pursue a goal.

Motivation in a sentence

• A good night's sleep restored her motivation to finish the project.

• The manager looked for ways to boost team motivation during the slow season.

Where does motivation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin verb movere, meaning 'to move' or 'to set in motion', from which came the Medieval Latin motivus, 'serving to move'. English first took in 'motive' through Old French as the thing that moves a person to act, and from it built 'motivation' as the noun for the act or state of being moved toward a goal. The term was rare until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when psychology adopted it as a technical word for the inner drive behind behaviour. The shared movere root still powers a whole family of relatives, including 'motion', 'mobile', 'motor', and 'emotion'. Knowing that the core is motiv (the same as in motive) helps fix the single t and the v before the -ation ending.

How the word is built

• motiv- (from movere: to move)
• -ation (noun of action)