nisus

Noun

nisus (usually uncountable, plural nisus or nisuses)

1. (usually) A mental or physical effort to attain a specific goal; a striving.
   • The godly personality of a higher order, as the telos of the nisus of moral categoriality, is the sensus plenior of the nisus to a universal communalization of perspectives.1992, J.G. Hart, The Person and the Common Life: Studies in a Husserlian Social Ethics, page 363
   • The immanent nisus to completion, therefore, drives the complex to the explication of its internal relations so that they become recognizable as such.2006, Errol E. Harris, Reflections on the Problem of Consciousness, page 158
2. (usually) The periodic procreative desire manifested in the spring by birds, etc.
3. (usually) The contraction of the diaphragm and abdominal muscles to evacuate faeces or urine.
   • The evacuation of the rectum and bladder being completed, immediately the nisus ceases, the rectum and the sphincters return to their former state of contraction, the diaphragm reascends, carrying with it and restoring to their proper situations the liver, the stomach, the spleen, the small...1833, James O' Beirne, New Views on the Process of Defecation, and Their Application to the Pathology and Treatment of Diseases of the Stomach, Bowels, and Other Organs, quoted in 1833, John Johnson...