motivated

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adjective

mo·​ti·​vat·​ed ˈmō-tə-ˌvā-təd 

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

a motivated employee

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

motivated

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past tense and past participle of motivate

Examples of motivated in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Adjective

There is so much more underneath those top-line numbers, from job approval ratings and who is most motivated to vote, to which party is more trusted to handle the issues people care about most — and so much more. — Domenico Montanaro, NPR, 13 Oct. 2026

Scaling is hard work, and without a motivated team, expanding will be grueling. — Hanneke Antonelli, Forbes.com, 13 Oct. 2026

Critics say the campaign is politically motivated and threatens to disenfranchise millions more. — ABC News, 12 Oct. 2026

While there are no plans to release it commercially, the team has published the design as open source on GitHub, so anyone sufficiently motivated can build their own. — New Atlas, 11 Oct. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

Adjective

1903, in the meaning defined above

Phrases Containing motivated

• self-motivated

Rhymes for motivated

• abdicated
• abrogated
• acclimated
• activated
• actuated
• adumbrated
• advocated
• aggravated
• aggregated
• agitated
• allocated
• alternated