Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use motivate in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb

Motivate means to provide someone with an incentive to do something; to encourage; to actuate. Example: “The weekly staff meeting was meant to motivate employees.”

Examples of motivate by meaning

verbTo provide someone with an incentive to do something; to encourage; to actuate.

  • The weekly staff meeting was meant to motivate employees.

verbTo animate; to propel; to cause to take action.

  • He was motivated purely by self-interest.
  • Steam-motivated pumps are used in manufacturing.

More sentences with motivate

  • Grinding lessons into students' heads does not motivate them to learn.From the entry grind
  • Can you tell us how you will motivate your students to learn?From the entry can you tell us
  • Debt can motivate or act as a disciplinary force for executives to achieve organizational efficiency.From the entry disciplinary
  • Your exhaustion and unhappiness alone should be enough to motivate him.2018 May 8, Steve Almond, “Save Me From This Domestic Drudgery! The Sweet Spot column”, in New York Times. From the entry weaponized incompetence
  • The old carrot and stick method of motivating people is pretty much goneburger.2014 June 30, “16 things I've learned in the past year, the hard way”, in The New Zealand Herald, Auckland: APN News & Media, News, page A25. From the entry goneburger
  • Obviously, it's the unspeakableness, the sheer horror of it, that is motivating some news organizations.2007 January 27, Paul Berton, “How do we define gruesome? (editorial)”, in London Free Press, Canada. From the entry unspeakableness
  • This is, of course, a motivating send off, one that encourages and uplifts your followers.2006, Eric G. Stephan, R. Wayne Pace, To Lead as Jesus Led, →ISBN, page 51. From the entry send off
  • A "blacklash" may partly motivate the Afrocentrist movement among African-American scholars.1994, Dean Keith Simonton, Greatness: Who Makes History and Why, page 30. From the entry blacklash
  • She knew several ways to motivate subordinates — but how could she unmotivate someone?1976, Supervisory Management, page 37. From the entry unmotivate
  • “When farmers learn some Spanish, it actually entices and motivates the Spanish speakers to want to learn English,” she said.2024 August 24, Lisa Z. Leighton, “Farmer Teaches Spanish to Ag Industry”, in Lancaster Farming, volume 69, number 48, Ephrata, Penn.…. From the entry language-learning
  • “I’m not going to try to get into the head of my colleagues to understand what’s motivating them.2022 March 24, Russell Berman, “‘I’m Not Talking About Racism. I’m Talking About Decency.’”, in The Atlantic. From the entry get into someone's head
  • Thinspo, bonespo, meanspo, sweetspo, anything that could motivate me not to eat, not to consume, not to gain, not to fail.2020, Riley Willman, “Ana”, in Rapids Review (Anoka Ramsey Community College). From the entry gain
  • Finally, the initial contact often becomes the project's point person, helping to organize, motivate, and communicate with participants throughout the project.2018, Sandra Schamroth Abrams, Xiaojun June Chen, Michael P. Downton, Managing Educational Technology, →ISBN. From the entry point person
  • The variety and quality are important to motivate consistent caloric intake and prevent nutritional deficiency and weight loss.2016 October 5, Evidence Report: Risk of Performance Decrement and Crew Illness Due to an Inadequate Food System, National Aeronautics and…. From the entry menu fatigue
  • The memory of being mocked as a "zero fighter" still haunts me and motivates me to push the limit.2015 August 4, Joan Chew, The Straits Times, Singapore, retrieved 18 Oct 2017. From the entry zero fighter
  • Beyond such questions are others, ulterior questions which are more interesting to us and which motivate the questions of fact.2012, Alexander Broadie, Agreeable Connexions: Scottish Enlightenment Links with France, Edinburgh: John Donald, →ISBN. From the entry ulterior
  • The proposition on the left side (if eventuated) would motivate the eventuation of the proposition on the right side.2012, Ephraim Nissan, Computer Applications for Handling Legal Evidence, Police Investigation and Case Argumentation, page 438. From the entry eventuation
  • Maybe paperphilia really isn't so different from the recessive pinings that motivate some people to own antique cars.2010, William Powers, Hamlet's BlackBerry, Harper, →ISBN, page 139. From the entry paperphilia
  • Coaches are assessed by their ability to motivate their players.2003, Gerald A. Walford, Gerald E. Walford, “Mental Skills”, in Coaching Girls’ Ice Hockey, Terre Haute, Ind.: Wish Publishing, →ISBN…. From the entry you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make her drink
  • Over the course of a year, the village would be weaned from the technical advice and motivating presence of the animatrice.1994, Katherine A. Dettwyler, “12. Dancing Skeletons”, in Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa, Waveland Press, →ISBN, page 141. From the entry animatrice
  • Both aesthetic and social logic motivate the victimages.1990, Richard Schechner, Willa Appel, By Means of Performance, page 215. From the entry victimage
  • How to motivate and uplift the pupils?1990, S. K. Aggarwal, Investigative Journalism in India, page 54. From the entry teacherness
  • It would, if the motivating factors for such perception of the unalertable nature of facts are either self-justification or self-pity.1972, Rohit Mehta, From Mind to Super-mind: A Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, page 206. From the entry unalertable
  • We should motivate — not mismotivate; direct — not misdirect.1944, Business Education World - Volume 24, page 397. From the entry mismotivate
  • Having the mechanical imperative of scenery improving your park rating helps motivate me, admittedly, but I still appreciate the power and potential in the toolset.2025 February, Rick Lane, “Review: Planet Coaster 2”, in PC Gamer (US), number 392, pages 68-69; published online 1 November 2024. From the entry mechanical
  • Thinspiration, thinspo, bonespo, meanspo, sweetspo, anything that could motivate me not to eat, not to consume, not to gain, not to fail.2020, Riley Willman, “Ana”, in The Rapids Review, Coon Rapids, Minn.: Anoka-Ramsey Community College, page 59. From the entry bonespo
  • This experience enables Nāgārjuna to recognize that desire is the root cause of suffering and motivates him to turn to a more ascetic lifestyle.2015, Carl Olson, Indian Asceticism: Power, Violence, and Play, page 155. From the entry ascetic
  • When applied to the Holy Spirit it refers to the redemptive purpose that motivates and orients the work of the Holy Spirit in redemption.2010, Michael Wilkinson, Steven M. Studebaker, editors, A Liberating Spirit: Pentecostals and Social Action in North America…. From the entry entelechy
  • The search for authenticity arguably motivates backpackers to travel off the beaten track in search of areas not yet contaminated by tourists or other backpackers.2004, Greg Richards, Julie Wilson, The Global Nomad: Backpacker Travel in Theory and Practice, page 140. From the entry off the beaten track
  • The shapes here are dense and collective, the babushkaed dancers riding the pulse that motivates the music and anchors Zoltan Kodaly’s score.1997 March 14, Debra Cash, “Lesson in classic modern”, in The Boston Globe, volume 251, number 73, page C11. From the entry babushkaed
  • Indeed, there is a streak of Reaganomics that believes the only way to motivate American workers is to scare them straight with unemployment charts.1982 September 3, Ellen Goodman, “Work ethic remains strong as ever”, in Spokesman-Review, Spokane, USA, retrieved 13 Feb 2013, page 4. From the entry scare straight
  • They should promote Hodophilic personality traits in their commercials and motivate customers by convincing them that they are safe because government is working hard for the tourists.2020, Shah et. al., “Coronavirus disease and human health: Postpone your tourism plans”, in Elementary Education Online, volume 19, number…. From the entry hodophilic
  • Something must be pushing on it, or its motions must derive from some internal teleological "drive" within it – a sort of simple consciousness motivating it.2014, Guido Bonino, Greg Jesson, Javier Cumpa, editors, Defending Realism: Ontological and Epistemological Investigations, Berlin: Walter…. From the entry entelechy
  • He always allowed them to motivate him to a level of intensity to do better, rather than remain in a nowhere life in a nowhere place like Harlem.2012, Nicholas Borelli, Let No Man Be My Albatross, →ISBN, page 247. From the entry nowhere
  • This theological vision, coupled with the great love, trust, and faith that Chabadnikim have in their Rebbe, motivated and continues to motivate Lubavitchers to take up the outreach challenge.2010 winter, Eric Caplan, “The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch by Sue Fishkoff […] Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers…. From the entry Chabadnik
  • The observers most adequately list the different aspects of this insight and yet emphasize somewhat one-sidely the patient's need for love as the most important motivating factor.1994, Samuel Eisenstein, Norman A. Levy, Judd Marmor, The Dyadic Transaction. From the entry one-sidely
  • The successful applicant will not be afraid to work with the men "on the tools", so that he knows them, can motivate them, and lead them by example.1980 August 23, The Canberra Times, Canberra, page 26, column 6. From the entry on the tools

Meaning of motivate

  1. verb To provide someone with an incentive to do something; to encourage; to actuate.
  2. verb To animate; to propel; to cause to take action.

Full definition of motivate

Questions about motivate in a sentence

How do you use motivate in a sentence?
Motivate is used as a verb. For example: “The weekly staff meeting was meant to motivate employees.”
What is a short sentence with motivate?
“He was motivated purely by self-interest.”
What does motivate mean?
Motivate means to provide someone with an incentive to do something; to encourage; to actuate.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: motivate (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use motivate in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/motivate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.