Word.ws English Dictionary

motiveless

motiveless adjective: without a motive.

Adjective

motiveless (not comparable)

  1. Without a motive.
    • This seems to have been a motiveless crime: no money was stolen, and nobody had cause to hate the victim.
    • He was interested in their genuine, yet refined simplicity; and, moreover, the most worn and worldly natures vindicate their humanity by occasional preferences and motiveless likings.1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XIV, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 167

Origin of motiveless

From motive + -less.

Words formed from motiveless

Questions about motiveless

What does motiveless mean?
Motiveless means without a motive.
What part of speech is motiveless?
Motiveless is an adjective.

Words near motiveless in the dictionary

  1. motive power
  2. motive power depot
  3. motive power depots
  4. motive powers
  5. motived
  6. motiveless
  7. motivelessly
  8. motivelessness
  9. motiveness
  10. motives
  11. motivi

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: motiveless (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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