INCENTIVE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Incentive

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/ɪnsˈɛntɪv/ /ɪnsˈɛnɪv/ Listen

noun

Incentive n. That which moves or influences the mind, or operates on the passions; that which incites, or has a tendency to incite, to determination or action; that which prompts to good or ill; motive; spur; as, the love of money, and the desire of promotion, are two powerful incentives to action. "The greatest obstacles, the greatest terrors that come in their way, are so far from making them quit the work they had begun, that they rather prove incentives to them to go on in it."

Synonyms: Motive; spur; stimulus; incitement; encouragement; inducement; influence.

adjective

Incentive adj.

Inciting; encouraging or moving; rousing to action; stimulative. "Competency is the most incentive to industry."

Serving to kindle or set on fire. (R.) "Part incentive reed Provide, pernicious with one touch of fire."

See images of 'Incentive'

Etymology of 'Incentive'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Incentive" Quotes from Famous Books

... village. To be sure, Mr. Shackford had been in litigation with several of the corporations, and had had legal quarrels with more than one of his neighbors; but Mr. Shackford had never been victorious in any of these contests, and the incentive of revenge was wanting to explain the crime. Besides, it was so ...

— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... wish to take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude for the generous interest and sympathy with which my work has been received. Such kindness is very imperfectly repaid by an author's thanks; it is certainly the best incentive to further work. ...

— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... which seemed to have a separate life and will of its own, and which, with no conscious invitation upon my part, would suddenly visit me! and in all manner of shapes and ways! But whatever my difficulties, I had always this immense incentive—to please my Jesus, tender and ...

— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley

... while he sympathizes with another the motive and aim of which he believes to be good. Of course, too, there were other objectors who denied, and will to this day not blush to deny, that the question of Slavery was the real substantial incentive to secession, and who paraded the minor questions of tariffs, the conflicting interests of the productive and the manufacturing States, and the like. These arguments the writer leaves unfingered; it is no business of his to fray their delicate texture. All he has to say of them here ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... inhabited by savages is poor in food-supply their number is, as a rule, small and their condition poor. It is not good for a people to have too easy times; that deprives them of the incentive to work. But also it is not good for people who are backward in civilization to be kept to a land which treats them too harshly; for then they never get a fair chance to progress in the scale of civilization. The people of the tropics and the people near the poles lagged behind in the ...

— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox

More quotes...