Noun
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.
Fig.: Impulse; incentive; vigor; force.
The aititude through which a heavy body must fall to acquire a velocity equal to that with which a ball is discharged from a piece.
Source: Webster's dictionaryThere's a subterranean impetus towards pornography so powerful that half the business world is juiced by the sort of half sex that one finds in advertisements. Norman Mailer
If we would understand the Scientific Revolution correctly, we should always remember that its most powerful impetus was the unremitting search for hidden divinity. As such, it is a direct descendant of the breakdown of the bicameral mind. Julian Jaynes
If I compare arithmetic with a tree that unfolds upward into a multitude of techniques and theorems while its root drives into the depths, then it seems to me that the impetus of the root. Gottlob Frege
I do not want to speak about overpopulation or birth control, but I think education is the way to give new impetus to the poverty question. Harri Holkeri
The joy which answers to prayer give, cannot be described; and the impetus which they afford to the spiritual life is exceedingly great. George Müller
For life is tendency, and the essence of a tendency is to develop in the form of a sheaf, creating, by its very growth, divergent directions among which its impetus is divided. Henri Bergson