motoric

[moh-tawr-ik, -tor-]

adjective

1. motor.

2. (of music or musical performance) full of movement or energy.

Other Word Forms

• motorically adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of motoric¹

First recorded in 1925–30; motor + -ic

Example Sentences

It commissioned a major organ concerto, “At the Royal Majestic,” for soloist Cameron Carpenter, that is as maximalist as it gets, referencing everything from gospel music to jitterbug to ragtime to blues to raga to Minimalism’s motoric phrasing, all of it coming out sounding like Riley.

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But the momentum shifts, the odd meter turns into a motoric 4/4 and then recedes into un-metered, breathy spaces.

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Grazyna Bacewicz’s motoric Overture for Orchestra, which opened the program, felt thick, too.

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“In the Water” works up to beat-driven psychedelia: motoric like Krautrock, using the sound of dripping water as percussion, flecked with violin and harp sounds, cheerfully offering advice — “Don’t ask for much/Don’t ask if you will ever change” — and kicking up a ruckus before dissolving into a welter of vocal overdubs and a cryptic postscript: “Guilt takes many forms,” they sing.

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LCD Soundsystem’s first new song since 2017, for the soundtrack of Noah Baumbach’s film of the Don DeLillo novel “White Noise,” is the band’s latest jaunty, motoric complaint about money and mortality.

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