IMPETUS • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Impetus

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/ˈɪmpətəs/ Listen

noun

Impetus n.

A property possessed by a moving body in virtue of its weight and its motion; the force with which any body is driven or impelled; momentum. Note: Momentum is the technical term, impetus its popular equivalent, yet differing from it as applied commonly to bodies moving or moved suddenly or violently, and indicating the origin and intensity of the motion, rather than its quantity or effectiveness.

Fig.: Impulse; incentive; stimulus; vigor; force; as, the President's strong recommendation provided the impetus needed to pass the campaign reform bill.

(Gun.) The altitude through which a heavy body must fall to acquire a velocity equal to that with which a ball is discharged from a piece.

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Etymology of 'Impetus'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Impetus" Quotes from Famous Books

... high ground, and at this season it spreads out like the Ambriz in broad stagnant sheets, bordered with reeds and grass supplying fish and crabs, wild ducks and mosquitoes. Presently, when the Cacimbo ends in stormy rains and horrid rollers, its increased volume and impetus will burst the sand-strip which confines it, and the washed-away material ...

— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... scarlet from rowing on the river with "Dora" Eweword, and she spoke of her jaunt as soon as we got outside, apparently pregnant with the knowledge innate in the dullest of her sex, that the most efficacious way of giving impetus to the love of one ...

— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... of this writhing soul raised many new speculations in Donaldson's mind especially in connection with its possible outcome. In the matter of religion he was negative, neither believing any professed creed nor denying any. He had received no early impetus, and had up to now been too preoccupied with his earthly interests, with no great grief or happiness to arouse him, to formulate any theory in his own mind. Even at the moment he had swallowed the poison the motive prompting him to it had been so intensely material that it had started but the most ...

— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... in Teviotdale churchyard, and she was in the habit of stealing away from her friends at night, to weep over his grave. These melancholy visits had the effect of giving a new impetus to her malady, making her for a time the victim of any fancy that ...

— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... racing horses as they approached a point where the slope terminated in two diverging canyons. Mrs. Ashwood gave a sharp pull upon her bit. To her consternation the mustang stopped short almost instantly,—planting his two fore feet rigidly in the dust and even sliding forward with the impetus. Had her seat been less firm she might have been thrown, but she recovered herself, although in doing so she still bore upon the bit, when to her astonishment the mustang deliberately stiffened himself as if for a shock, ...

— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte

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