Word Finder - impulse

definition

A thrust; a push; a sudden force that impels.

definition

A wish or urge, particularly a sudden one prompting action.

example

The impulse to learn drove me to study night and day.

definition

The integral of force over time.

example

The total impulse from the impact will depend on the kinetic energy of the bullet.

definition

To impel; to incite.

She combed Destiny's hair into pig tails, and then on impulse, did the same with hers.

She resisted the impulse to check her watch.

On an impulse, she leaned down and kissed them.

That impulse was reasonable.

On an impulse, he turned and looked at the family seated near his table still enjoying their meal.

But an irresistible impulse drew her forward.

The impulse to utter audible sounds had always been strong within me.

A wild impulse to jump seized me, but terror held me fast.

Emerson declares that " the impulse to seek proof of immortality is itself the strongest proof of all."

God could not have put into her heart an impulse that was against His will.

The game finished but Dean ignored an impulse to introduce himself and chat with the boy.

On an impulse, Dean drove back in behind it and strolled over to meet the young man who stepped from the vehicle.

The feelings which grew up, and the movements that were fostered till they rendered the Civil War inevitable, received something of the same impulse from Massachusetts which she had given a century before to the feelings and movements forerunning the War of American Independence.

One party taught that while the first impulse must come from the Holy Spirit the work might be compared to reviving a man apparently dead.

This rich genius gave also the first impulse to romantic, didactic and mystic poetry; and even his own age produced powerful co-operators in these three most conspicuous departments of Persian literature.

The religious impulse which was so strong both in the Spanish and the English colonies was prominent in the French, but in the most fatal form.

He was not a great original thinker; he lacked the creative faculty and the creative impulse.

Even before that, however, owing partly to the impulse given by the university of London after 1836, the standard of learning in some of the colleges had been rising; and the last generation has seen marked advance in this respect.

Another great service to English philology was rendered by his paper, read before the Philological Society, "On some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries" (1857), which gave the first impulse to the great Oxford New EnglishDictionary.

The close of the American Civil War, the Fenian raids across the American border, and the dangers incident to the international situation, gave a decisive impulse to the movement.

The historical and geographical researches of Kremer and Sprenger gave a fresh impulse to inquiry.

After 1/nth of a revolution, the two sets of perforations will again coincide, the lateral impulse of the air repeated, and hence the rapidity of rotation increased.

And the impulse thus given continued.

After nearly five years spent in Europe in preparation, he entered with enthusiasm on his duties, and, for five years more, gave a vigorous impulse, not only to the study of Greek, but to all the work of the college.

He also introduced text-books, and came into stimulating contact with his people; perhaps no one has ever succeeded as he did by the use of these methods in communicating intellectual, moral and religious impulse to so many students.

The great philosophical impulse was that given by Darwin in 1859 through his demonstration of the theory of descent, which gave tremendous zest to the search for pedigrees (phylogeny) of the existing and extinct types of animal and plant life.

Thus there came into the fluctuating mass a strong movement and formative impulse, and the individual systems and sects sprang up like mushrooms from this soil.

Finally, it was Gnosticism which gave the most decided impulse to the consolidation of the Christian Church as a church.

A great impulse to the prosperity of the town was given by the introduction of the boot and shoe trade, especially the manufacture of uppers.

There must be recognized in God as a completed actuality, a dim, obscure ground or basis, which can only be described as not yet being, but as containing in itself the impulse to externalization, to existence.

The new honours received from the caliph gave fresh impulse to Mahmud's zeal on behalf of Islam, and he resolved on an annual expedition against the idolaters of India.

But it still continued to exist elsewhere, both in the Byzantine Empire and in the West, and in the earlier part of the middle ages it gave an impulse to the formation of new sects, which remained related to it.'

The most powerful impulse to mining operations, and the immediate cause of a somewhat lengthy period of wild excitement and speculation, was the discovery and successful opening of the Comstock lode in 1859, in the western part of what is now Nevada, but was then part of Utah.

Good fortune it divides into two kinds, both irrational; one divine, according to impulse, and more continuous; the other contrary to impulse and not continuous.

The opposition of divine good fortune according to impulse to that which is contrary to impulse reminds us of Plato's point in the Phaedrus that there is a divine as well as a diseased madness.

The great development of its herring fishery in the latter part of the 18th century gave a new impulse to the city's trade, which was kept up by the influence of the "Continental System," under which Gothenburg became a depot for the colonial merchandise of England.

In 1808 the fugitive Portuguese court, under the regent Dom Joao VI., took refuge in Rio de Janeiro, and gave a new impulse to its growth.

Into England silk manufacture was introduced during the reign of Henry VI.; but the first serious impulse to manufactures of that class was due to the immigration in 1585 of a large body of skilled Flemish weavers who fled from the Low Countries in consequence of the struggle with Spain then devastating their land.

Somewhere about this period of More's life two things happened which gave in opposite directions the determining impulse to his.

The veneration of relics also received a strong impulse from the fact that the Church required that a relic should be deposited in every altar.

The island served as a refuge for Greek scholars, and in 1732 became the home of the first academy of modern Greece, but no serious impulse to Greek thought came from this quarter.

Buchner (q.v.) himself said that he owed to Moleschott the first impulse to composing his important Buchner.

Again, Schelling urged that besides the rational element there must be something else; that there is in nature, as natures naturans, a blind impulse, a will without intelligence, which belongs to the existent; and that even God Himself as the Absolute cannot be pure thought, because in order to think He must have an existence which cannot be merely His thought of it, and therefore pure being is the prior condition of thought and spirit.

Like these predecessors, and like his younger contemporary Paulsen, in calling will fundamental he includes impulse (Trieb).

If he is to be believed, at the bottom of all organic evolution organic impulses becoming habits produce structural changes, which are transmitted by heredity; and as an impulse thus gradually becomes secondarily automatic, the will passes to higher activities, which in their turn become secondarily automatic, and so on.

He has endowed all the plants in the world with motives, feelings directed to an end, and ideas, all of which, according to him, are required for impulse !

There is also an impulse to think, e.g.

But it does not follow that thought is will, or even that there is no thinking without either impulse or will proper.

But it must be remembered that these conclusions are arrived at by confusing action, reaction, life, excitability, impulse, and rational desire, all under the one word " will," as well as by omitting the involuntary action of intelligence under the pressure of evidence.

Its finest products were in bronze, but the artistic impulse spread to humbler work in wood and pottery.