What is the difference between motives and motivation

While motivation is always from an external source in an external environment, inspiration comes from within. In contrast, inspiration is the process in which an individual is mentally encouraged to do something.

This article is to shed light on the difference between motivation and inspiration which is actually a difference between when you feel you should and when truly want something. Basis for Comparison Motivation Inspiration Meaning Motivation refers to a process of stimulating someone to act in a definite way to achieve a goal. Inspiration is defined as an act of influencing people mentally and emotionally to do something creative.

Natural calling, which comes from deep inside us. Motivation is a psychological concept, which is described as a stimulus or force, that impels people to take an action. It is something that persuades people to behave and act in a particular way. It is also defined as the process of giving a reason to someone to do or achieve something. When we learn French or Spanish, we take it for granted that we learn a standard version of the language whether a European version, or an American version.

There is much debate about whether a World English will eventually replace BrE and AmE for international communication, but it hasn't happened yet, and I'm afraid Indian English doesn't really have much currency beyond the sub-continent. But British English is changing rapidly, as does our concept of 'proper English'.

You just need to listen to old radio programmes from the 50's and 60s on the iPlayer to hear the difference. A few years ago a City report suggested that companies prefer to employ people with Estuary accents rather than RP ones, as they sounded friendlier, and RP has really lost the position it had up until the 60s.

Just listen to Radio Four announcers and continuity people - all speaking Standard English of course, but hardly a pure RP speaker amongst them, so with quite a bit of pronunciation variation, especially in vowel sounds. As for less common expressions, isn't the Academic Word List divided into sublists according to their frequency?

Macmillan Dictionary gives star ratings according to frequency, and Wordcount. Or you can use the BNC simple search facility to get frequency:. For example, if I take the word 'analysis' from sublist 1 in the AWL, Macmillan gives it three stars for high frequency and Wordcount.

Netspeak finds At Netspeak, And when I take 'adjacent' from sublist 10 in the AWL, Macmillan gives it one star so still within the top , and Wordcount lists it at Netspeak gives it 9. Intriguingly, 'conceive', from sublist 10, 1. To return to topic, my motivation behind that rather long comment is a general interest in English and in looking things up; my motive was to try and answer jayles's question.

The first entry will probably be MoreWords, which gives words for Scrabble etc. It will give you a list of the most common, with their ratings. This is what they say about it:. This contains , words which are mostly US spellings, with some words from other forms of English such as British. Curiously, according to the Google Ngram Viewer, the usage of "motive", "motives" has been steadily declining since In contrast, usage of "motivate", "motivates", and "motivated" has risen to overtake the former words.

Could this be because "academics" favored a more latin sounding word? I don't think there is a connection between motive s and motivate s considering they fall within two different word groups parts of speech. If there were a nominal Latin replacement of motive, then I you may be on to something.

Jasper Oct Jasper - there's no reason why different word classes can't affect or have an effect on each other, just think how 'prioritise' has replaced 'give priority to', and 'incentivise' is replacing 'give incentives to' in business English. The reasons for the rise of motivate and motivation are not hard to see.

While motive has been English since the 14th century, both motivate and motivation are relatively recent arrivals and respectively - Etymology Online.

What's more, they became heavily used in two very twentieth century phenomena - the rise of psychology, and of business theory. I can't open a business course book without stumbling across staff motivation. I doubt this has so much to do with sounding more Latin, jayles they're all ultimately from Latin. The provenance is likely to have been French or German via psychology - much early work on psychology was in German-speaking countries.

And the meaning was a new one, so a new word would have been appropriate. But I think you're on to something with motivation and possibly even motivate partly replacing motive. Oxford Online gives these definitions:. This looks to me to give some considerable room for overlap, so it wouldn't be surprising if motivation was replacing motive in some senses, especially to talk more generally, where earlier there had been no alternative to motive.

It seems no accident that the beginning of the real decline in use of 'motive' around coincides pretty neatly with the beginnings of the use of motivation.

Incidentally, since , according to Ngram, motivate and motivation have retreated somewhat, while motive has had a bit of a comeback. Toshidama Japanese Prints Original nineteenth century Japanese woodblock prints.

Fictionspawn Illustrations and Short Stories. Disability Visibility Project "Creating, sharing, and amplifying disability media and culture". A refugee's journey - Vietnam to Australia Written by hiMe. Follow Following. Kathleen W Curry Join 21, other followers. Sign me up. Already have a WordPress. Log in now. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. Search for:. Introduction to Motivation.

Defining Motivation Motivation describes the wants or needs that direct behavior toward a goal. Learning Objectives Define motivation in terms of drives, motives, and intrinsic vs. Key Takeaways Key Points Motivation is an urge to behave or act in a way that will satisfy certain conditions, such as wishes, desires, or goals.

Psychologists believe that motivation is rooted in a basic impulse to optimize well-being, minimize physical pain, and maximize pleasure. Motivations are commonly separated into drives which are primarily biological, like thirst or hunger and motives which are primarily driven by social and psychological mechanisms.

In addition to biological drives, motivations can be intrinsic arising from internal factors or extrinsic arising from external factors. Key Terms motivation : An incentive or reason for doing something. Licenses and Attributions. CC licensed content, Shared previously.