motive
noun
something that causes a person to act in a certain way, do a certain thing, etc.; incentive.
motiveless
-
a word derived from
motive.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
We now understand, more clearly than in the 1950s, that the consequences of human action on a global scale are rather like Godzilla: huge, unknowable, motiveless and not easily stopped.
From Scientific American ● Nov. 3, 2023
Mr Blunt said: "This appears to be a completely motiveless, random, senseless, inexplicable incident."
From BBC ● May 16, 2022
Some resistance was more overtly political; the critic Elaine Showalter, on Twitter, decried a plotline of the “saintly academic hero tormented by motiveless malignity of his despicable wife and other monsters.”
From The New Yorker ● Mar. 11, 2019
Everybody seemed to have an opinion about the guilt or innocence of Porto and Basterra, yet nobody could explain such an apparently motiveless crime.
From The Guardian ● Feb. 2, 2016
Here they swayed to and fro, hour after hour, motiveless, awaiting the progress of events.
From Louis Philippe Makers of History Series by John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
