motive power

1. 1.

   the power or ability to move

   Synonymslocomotionmotivity

   Broadermobility

Questions about motive power

What does motive power mean?

motive power means "the power or ability to move".

What is another word for motive power?

Close synonyms include locomotion, motivity. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is motive power a common word?

motive power is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.