Word that means motivated

: provided with a motive : having an incentive or a strong desire to do well or succeed in some pursuit

Courses are being offered on college campuses for those who are highly motivated but who without such help often drop out and are lost to society and themselves.Carol Kort

In a sporting context, for example, athletes who consistently seem to play hard and rarely concede defeat are often described as highly motivated or «competitive» by the media.Robert C. Eklund

Example Sentences

Recent Examples on the Web

Republicans denounced the charges as weak and politically motivated.


ABC News, 9 Apr. 2023





Falling is an integral part of learning to ski, and realizing that falls happen to even expert skiers is an important realization to keep beginners interested and motivated to improve.


Evie Carrick, Travel + Leisure, 9 Apr. 2023





So, both the Clippers and Warriors should be highly motivated to defeat the Blazers. 2.


Afentres, oregonlive, 8 Apr. 2023





Pay attention to dreams and get enough sleep Both figuratively and literally, McGarey has paid attention to her dreams throughout her life and used them to calm her brain and stay motivated.


Alexa Mikhail, Fortune Well, 8 Apr. 2023





Even motivated patients would struggle to be heard.


Alex R. Rosenblat, STAT, 7 Apr. 2023





Jones, Pearson and Johnson decried the Republicans’ actions as oppressive, vindictive and racially motivated.


Kelly Mccleary, CNN, 7 Apr. 2023





Stay motivated because the view 2,619 feet above sea level is worth it! 9 Conquer a World Record-Breaking Climbing Wall in Reno, Tahoe.


James Barrett, Men’s Health, 6 Apr. 2023





Coming in off three days’ rest, the Clippers opened the game with a 23-11 run in which a clearly motivated Westbrook scored eight points and assisted on their first two baskets.


Beth Harris, ajc, 6 Apr. 2023



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These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word ‘motivated.’ Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1903, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler

The first known use of motivated was
in 1903

Dictionary Entries Near motivated

Cite this Entry

“Motivated.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/motivated. Accessed 14 Apr. 2023.

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Last Updated:
11 Apr 2023
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motivated

UK:*UK and possibly other pronunciationsUK and possibly other pronunciations/ˈməʊtɪveɪtɪd/

From the verb motivate: (⇒ conjugate)
motivated is: Click the infinitive to see all available inflections
v past
v past p

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Princeton’s WordNetRate this definition:5.0 / 1 vote

  1. motivatedadjective

    provided with a motive or given incentive for action

    «a highly motivated child can learn almost anything»; «a group of politically motivated men»

WiktionaryRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

  1. motivatedadjective

    Enthusiastic, especially about striving toward a goal.

    We’re looking for a highly motivated individual who will fit into our fast-paced corporate culture.

WikipediaRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

  1. Motivated

    Motivation is the reason for which humans and other animals initiate, continue, or terminate a behavior at a given time. Motivational states are commonly understood as forces acting within the agent that create a disposition to engage in goal-directed behavior. It is often held that different mental states compete with each other and that only the strongest state determines behavior. This means that we can be motivated to do something without actually doing it. The paradigmatic mental state providing motivation is desire. But various other states, such as beliefs about what one ought to do or intentions, may also provide motivation. Motivation is derived from the word ‘motive’, which denotes a person’s needs, desires, wants, or urges. It is the process of motivating individuals to take action in order to achieve a goal. The psychological elements fueling people’s behavior in the context of job goals might include a desire for money.
    Various competing theories have been proposed concerning the content of motivational states. They are known as content theories and aim to describe what goals usually or always motivate people. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the ERG theory, for example, posit that humans have certain needs, which are responsible for motivation. Some of these needs, like for food and water, are more basic than other needs, such as for respect from others. On this view, the higher needs can only provide motivation once the lower needs have been fulfilled. Behaviorist theories try to explain behavior solely in terms of the relation between the situation and external, observable behavior without explicit reference to conscious mental states.
    Motivation may be either intrinsic, if the activity is desired because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable, or extrinsic, if the agent’s goal is an external reward distinct from the activity itself. It has been argued that intrinsic motivation has more beneficial outcomes than extrinsic motivation. Motivational states can also be categorized according to whether the agent is fully aware of why he acts the way he does or not, referred to as conscious and unconscious motivation. Motivation is closely related to practical rationality. A central idea in this field is that we should be motivated to perform an action if we believe that we should perform it. Failing to fulfill this requirement results in cases of irrationality, known as akrasia or weakness of the will, in which there is a discrepancy between our beliefs about what we should do and our actions.
    Research on motivation has been employed in various fields. In the field of business, a central question concerns work motivation, for example, what measures an employer can use to ensure that his employees are motivated. Motivation is also of particular interest to educational psychologists because of its crucial role in student learning. Specific interest has been given to the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in this field.

Editors ContributionRate this definition:0.0 / 0 votes

  1. motivated

    Focused with a passion to achieve.

    They were both motivated and supported each other to reach their goals.

    Submitted by MaryC on February 15, 2020  

How to pronounce motivated?

How to say motivated in sign language?

Numerology

  1. Chaldean Numerology

    The numerical value of motivated in Chaldean Numerology is: 9

  2. Pythagorean Numerology

    The numerical value of motivated in Pythagorean Numerology is: 1

Examples of motivated in a Sentence

  1. Lucy Tu:

    If I take a gap year, there is a chance I’ll get a more typical freshman year, if I go to campus this fall, I’ll at least get a taste. But if I stay at home, I’m giving up all of it. I don’t know if I could stay motivated or if it will be enough.

  2. Detroit Lions:

    I think to sum it up, like I said, it’ll be fun to see all of those people and it’ll be fun to be there, and of course you’re motivated. Of course, you have the chip on your shoulder, I’ve spoken about that. There was some disrespect felt toward the end. There was some sourness there toward the end and you still feel that. You still have that chip on your shoulder.

  3. Matthias Kollatz-Ahnen:

    E.ON has demonstrated that it can be a motivated and competent partner for the state of Berlin in the field of gas supply, this partnership provides a strong foundation for accelerating the energy transition in Berlin.

  4. Lisa Reinsberg:

    Acts of genocide are motivated by a desire to destroy a particular group, crimes against humanity are defined as targeting individuals systematically or on a large scale, but those individuals are not necessarily part of the same group.

  5. Noah Lyles:

    We were all motivated to do something special and it just happened, everybody wanted it, we all wanted to break the curse, a generational curse and bring on a new era.

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  • British

This shows grade level based on the word’s complexity.

[ moh-tuh-veyt ]

/ ˈmoʊ təˌveɪt /

This shows grade level based on the word’s complexity.


verb (used with object), mo·ti·vat·ed, mo·ti·vat·ing.

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Origin of motivate

First recorded in 1860–65; motive + -ate1

OTHER WORDS FROM motivate

mo·ti·va·tor, nounde·mo·ti·vate, verb (used with object), de·mo·ti·vat·ed, de·mo·ti·vat·ing.non·mo·ti·vat·ed, adjectivere·mo·ti·vate, verb (used with object), re·mo·ti·vat·ed, re·mo·ti·vat·ing.

un·mo·ti·vat·ed, adjectiveun·mo·ti·vat·ing, adjectivewell-mo·ti·vat·ed, adjective

Words nearby motivate

motionless, motion picture, motion sickness, motion study, motion work, motivate, motivation, motivational, motivational research, motivation research, motivator

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Words related to motivate

drive, excite, galvanize, incline, inspire, persuade, prompt, propel, provoke, spark, spur, sway, trigger, actuate, arouse, bring, cause, dispose, draw, fire

How to use motivate in a sentence

  • We now need to ensure that all market players are motivated to make hyperefficient building insulation their standard operating procedure.

  • So when Kamaru became a world champion, that motivated me a lot.

  • This is the idea motivating the recent paper by Christos Makridis of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cary Wu of York University in Toronto.

  • For Adams, he hopes his trash pickups motivate others to litter less and pick up more.

  • I’m looking for someone who challenges me and motivates me to try new things.

  • Instructional materials and approaches that motivate, stimulate, and engage students.

  • The Democrats lost it, by being afraid to have a strong message and motivate their voters.

  • But he argued that the issue does motivate otherwise unlikely voters and could be a deciding factor in a close race.

  • Trying to motivate the Allies, he offered his assistance and cooperation to the profession as a whole, pro bono.

  • Needless to say, Democrats are hoping to use the issue to motivate their base.

  • They are used by the government as one of the economic levers intended to motivate enterprises toward greater efficiency.

    Area Handbook for Romania|Eugene K. Keefe, Donald W. Bernier, Lyle E. Brenneman, William Giloane, James M. Moore, and Neda A. Walpole

  • These problems may then motivate you to enter individual therapy.

  • He had felt it before, but the feeling was strong enough now to motivate action.

  • If He is in us, why does He not manifest to us continually, why does His power not always motivate our actions?

  • These principles motivate our actions within the United Nations.

British Dictionary definitions for motivate


verb

(tr) to give incentive to

Derived forms of motivate

motivator, noun

Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

  1. The object of semasiology.
    Two approaches to the study of meaning.

  2. Types of meaning.

  3. Meaning and motivation.

3.1.
The branch of lexicology which studies meaning is called
«semasiology«.
Sometimes the term «semantics»
is used as a synonym to semasiology, but it is ambiguous as it can
stand as well for (1)
the expressive aspect of language in general and (2)
the meaning of one particular word.

Meaning
is certainly the most important property of the word but what is
«meaning»?

Meaning
is one of the most controversial terms in lexicology. At present
there is no generally accepted definition of meaning. Prof.
Smirnitsky defines meaning as «a certain reflection in the mind
of objects, phenomena or relations that makes part of the linguistic
sign, its so-called inner facet, whereas the sound form functions as
its outer facet». Generally speaking, meaning can be described
as a component of the word through which a concept is communicated,
enabling the word to denote objects in the real world.

There are
two
approaches

to the study of meaning: the
referential approach

and the
functional approach
.
The former tries to define meaning in terms of relations between the
word (sound form), concept (notion, thought) and referent (object
which the word denotes). They are closely connected and the
relationship between them is represented by «the semiotic
triangle» ( = the basic triangle) of Ogden and Richards (in the
book «The Meaning of Meaning» (1923) by O.K. Ogden and I.A.
Richards).

concept

symbol
referent

(sound form)

This view denies a direct link
between words and things, arguing that the relationship can be made
only through the use of our minds. Meaning is related to a sound
form, concept and referent but not identical with them: meaning is a
linguistic phenomenon while neither concept nor referent is.

The
main criticism of this approach is the difficulty of identifying
«concepts»: they are mental phenomena and purely
subjective, existing
in the minds of individuals. The strongest point of this approach is
that it connects meaning and the process of nomination.

The functional approach to
meaning is less concerned with what meaning is than with how it
works. It is argued, to say that «words have meanings»
means only that they are used in a certain way in a sentence. There
is no meaning beyond that. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), in
particular, stressed the importance of this approach in his dictum:
«The meaning of the word is its use in the language». So
meaning is studied by making detailed analyses of the way words are
used in contexts, through their relations to other words in speech,
and not through their relations to concepts or referents.

Actually,
the functional approach is basically confined to the analysis of
sameness or difference of meaning. For example, we can say that in
«take
the bottle
»
and «take
to the

bottle»
take
has different meaning as it is used differently, but it does not
explain what the meaning of the verb is. So the functional approach
should
be used not as the theoretical basis for the study of meaning, but
only as complementary to the referential approach.

3.2.
Word meaning is made up of different components, commonly known
as types
of meaning
.
The two main types of meaning are grammatical
meaning
and
lexical meaning.

Grammatical
meaning

belongs to sets of word-forms and is common to
all words of the given part of speech,

e.g.
girls,
boys, classes, children, mice

express the meaning of
«plurality».

Lexical
meaning

belongs to an individual word in all its forms. It
comprises several components. The two main ones are the
denota
tional
component
and
the connotational component.

The
denotational
(
=
denotative
)
component
,
also called «referential
meaning» or «cognitive meaning», expresses the
conceptual (notional)
content of a word; broadly, it is some information, or knowledge,
of the real-world object that the word denotes.
Basically, this is the component that makes communication possible.

e.g.
notorious
«widely-known»,
celebrated
«known
widely».

The
connotational (connotative) component

expresses the attitude of
the speaker to what he is saying, to the object denoted by the word.
This component consists of emotive
connotation
and
evaluative
connotation.

1) Emotive
connotation

( = «affective meaning», or an emotive charge),

e.g.
In «a
single tree
»
single states that there is only one tree,
but
«a
lonely tree
»
besides giving the same information, also renders
(conveys) the feeling of sadness.

We
shouldn’t confuse emotive connotations and emotive denotative
meanings
in which some emotion is named, e.g. horror,
love, fear, etc
.

2) Evaluative
connotation

labels
the referent as «good» or «bad»,

e.g.
notorious
has a negative evaluative connotation, while
celebrated
a positive one. Cf.: a
notorious criminal/liar/
coward,
etc.

and a
celebrated singer/ scholar/ artist, etc.

It
should be noted that emotive and evaluative connotations are not
individual, they are common to all speakers of the language. But
emotive implications are individual (or common to a group of
speakers),
subjective, depend on personal experience.

e.g.
The word «hospital»
may evoke all kinds of emotions in
different
people (an
architect, a doctor, an invalid, etc.)

Stylistic
connotation
,
or stylistic reference, another component of word meaning, stands
somewhat apart from emotive and evaluative connotations. Indeed, it
does not characterize a referent, but rather states how a word should
be used by referring it to a certain functional style of the language
peculiar to a specific sphere of communication. It shows in what
social context, in what communicative situations the word can be
used.

Stylistically,
words can be roughly classified into literary,
or formal
(e.g.
commence, discharge, parent
),
neutral
(e.g.
father, begin, dismiss
)
and non-literary,
or informal
(e.g.
dad, sack, set off
).

3.3.
The term «motivation»
is used to denote the relationship between the
form of the word, i.e. its sound form, morphemic composition and
structural pattern, and its meaning.

There
are three
main types of motivation
:
phonetic,
morphological
and
semantic
.

1)
Phonetic
motivation

is a direct connection between the sound form
of a word and its meaning. There are two types of phonetic
motivation: sound
imitation
and
sound symbolism.

a) Sound
imitation,
or
onomatopoeia:
phonetically motivated words are
a direct imitation of the sounds they denote (or the sounds produced
by actions or objects they denote),

e.g.
buzz,
swish, bang, thud, cuckoo.

b) Sound
symbolism
.
It’s argued by some linguists that the sounds that make up a word may
reflect or symbolise the properties of the object which the word
refers
to, i.e. they may suggest size, shape, speed, colour, etc.

e.g.
back
vowels

suggest big size, heavy weight, dark colour, front
vowels

suggest lightness, smallness, etc.

Many
words beginning with sl-
are slippery in some way: slide,
slip, slither, sludge
,
etc.
or pejorative: slut,
slattern, sly, sloppy, slovenly
;
words that end in -ump
almost
all refer to some kind of roundish mass: plump,
chump,
rump, hump, stump
.

Certainly, not every word with
these phonetic characteristics will have the meaning suggested. This
is, perhaps, one of the reasons why sound symbolism is not
universally recognized in linguistics.

2) Morphological
motivation

is
a direct connection between the lexical meaning of the component
morphemes, the pattern of their arrangement and the meaning of the
word.

Morphologically motivated
words are those whose meaning is determined by the meaning of their
components,

e.g.
re-write
«write
again»,
ex-wife
«former
wife».

The degree
of morphological motivation may be different. Words may be
fully
motivated

(then they are transparent), partially
mo
tivated
and
non-motivated

(idiomatic, or opaque).

a)
If the meaning of the word is determined by the meaning of the
components
and the structural pattern, it is fully
motivated
:
e.g. hatless.

b)
If the connection between the morphemic composition of a word and
its meaning is arbitrary, the word is non-motivated,
e.g. buttercup
«yellow-flowered plant».

c)
In hammer
-er
shows that it is an instrument, but what is «hamming«?
«Ham»
has no lexical meaning in this word, thus the word is partially
motivated
.
Cf. also cranberry.

Motivation may be lost in the
course of time,

e.g.
in OE wīfman
was
motivated morphologically: wīf
+ man
«wife
of a man»; now it is opaque;
its motivation is said to be faded (woman).

3) Semantic
motivation

is based on co-existence of direct and figurative
meanings of the same word,

e.g.
butterfly

1) insect; 2) showy and
frivolous person.( = metaphorical extension of the direct meaning).

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