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{%type%} Definitions

WordNet 3.0Copyright Princeton University
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Short "hint"

A natural tendency, impulse or striving.

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Usage examples (30)
  • He took the philosophical idea of a "conatus" - a striving to continue to exist and thereby to preserve one's essence - as his general principle.
  • In Spinoza's view, we act virtuously if we act rationally to strive to exist, in accordance with this idea of a "conatus".
  • In short, Descartes, Leibniz, and Hume "de-anthropomorphized" conatus and causation.
  • The conatus of a moving body was its disposition to continue in motion unless interfered with.
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The Open Dictionary of English is a collaborative project, based on Open Source materials, LearnThat resources, and partner APIs.
We give special thanks to our LearnThat volunteers, as well as Princeton University and Wiktionary for their Open Source word data. We're also grateful for the support given by Google, Wordnik.com, Dictionary.com, Stands4.com and YouTube, OEDILF.com, Kylescholz.com, Best-Practice.com, Forvo.com, as well as the generous Creative Commons community.