motivate

verb

mo·ti·vate | \ ˈmō-tə-ˌvāt

motivated; motivating

Definition of motivate

: to provide with a motive : impel questions that excite and motivate youth She was motivated by a desire to help children.

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Examples of motivate in a Sentence

No one knows what motivated him to act in such a violent way.

Recent Examples on the Web

It was also motivated, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, by a strategic belief that users will increasingly gravitate to services that offer more privacy. — David Z. Morris, Fortune, "Facebook Is Turning Off Its Facial Recognition Features By Default, Continuing a Pivot to Privacy," 3 Sep. 2019 Those concerns are partially motivated by Trump’s own remarks. — Rick Noack, BostonGlobe.com, "Trump has a lot to say about Brexit, but are Brits listening?," 2 Sep. 2019 Like Derek Jeter [who in 1996 founded Turn 2 Foundation to help motivate kids to avoid drugs and alcohol]. — Nora Krug, Washington Post, "Jackie Robinson’s daughter wants to talk about race: ‘We still have hate’," 27 Aug. 2019 Grossman’s anger at Soviet abuses was motivated in part by grief over the betrayal of revolutionary ideals. — Sophie Pinkham, The New Republic, "Vasily Grossman’s Lost Epic," 27 Aug. 2019 Some of that heavy monitoring, camp directors note, is financially motivated: Parents shelling out $10,000 for an eight-week summer camp tend to want to see where that money has gone. — Drew Harwell, The Denver Post, "Summer camps use facial recognition so parents can watch from home," 25 Aug. 2019 On the other hand, learning of impending doom may also help motivate patients to work on improving their health through lifestyle changes to stall that fate. — Beth Mole, Ars Technica, "Researchers are creepily close to predicting when you’re going to die," 21 Aug. 2019 The realization of how complex [and costly] those impacts are… should help motivate greater policy engagement. — Geoff Dembicki, Scientific American, "Companies May Limit Life-saving Climate Data to Clients that Can Pay," 15 Aug. 2019 Only by applying pressure will China be motivated to change its destructive trade habits. — James D. Schultz For Cnn Business Perspectives, CNN, "Trump's trade war with China will be worth the fight," 15 Aug. 2019

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'motivate.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.