motivation

• POS: Noun
• HYPHEN: mo=ti=va=tion

CIDE DICTIONARY

motivation, n. 

•  The act or process of motivating.  [PJC]
•  The mental process that arouses an organism to action; as, a large part of a teacher's job is to give students the motivation to learn on their own.  [WordNet 1.5]
•  The goal or mental image of a goal that creates a motivation{2}; as, the image of a peaceful world is a powerful motivation for only a rare few individuals.  [PJC]

THESAURUS

motivation

activity, actuation, animation, aptitude, aptness, brightness, catalyst, cleverness, direction, docility, dynamics, educability, facility, going, impetus, impressionability, impulse, incentive, incitation, incitement, influence, inner-direction, instigation, intelligence, kinematics, kinesipathy, kinesis, kinesitherapy, kinetics, malleability, mobilization, moldability, motion, move, movement, moving, other-direction, plasticity, pliability, prompting, quickness, readiness, receptivity, restlessness, running, spur, stimulant, stimulation, stir, stirring, susceptibility, teachability, teachableness, trainableness, unrest, velocity, willingness