conatus
Americannoun
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an effort or striving.
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a force or tendency simulating a human effort.
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(in the philosophy of Spinoza) the force in every animate creature toward the preservation of its existence.
noun
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an effort or striving of natural impulse
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(esp in the philosophy of Spinoza) the tendency of all things to persist in their own being
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of conatus
1655–65; < Latin: exertion, equivalent to cōnā ( rī ) to attempt + -tus suffix of v. action
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.
Moreover, within everything spiritual there is a conatus to clothe itself with a body.
From Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom by Ager, John
And since good and evil are opposites, there is an intermediate, and in it an equilibrium, in which evil acts against good; but as it does not prevail, it stops in a conatus.
From The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love by Swedenborg, Emanuel
It was a conatus, what physiologists call a nisus, a struggle in a very ambitious spark, or scintilla, to kindle into a fire.
From Miscellaneous Essays by De Quincey, Thomas
It further follows that in all these there is an inmost conatus, the conatus to perform use to the human race.
From Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom by Ager, John
This desire is the perpetual conatus of that love, from which flow all its effects.
From The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love by Swedenborg, Emanuel
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
