conatus

Borrowed from Latin cōnātus.

• (singular):
  • enPR: kōnāʹtəs
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /kəʊˈneɪ.təs/
  • (General American) IPA^(key): /koʊˈneɪ.təs/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (plural):
  • enPR: kōnāʹto͞os
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /kəʊˈneɪtuːs/
  • (General American) IPA^(key): /koʊˈneɪ.tus/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

conatus (plural conatuses or conatus)

1. An effort, an endeavour, a striving.
   1. Such a striving effort that is a life force.
      • 2018, Steven Pinker, “Chapter 2: Entro, Evo, Info”, in Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Penguin, →ISBN:

        Creationists commonly doctor the Second Law of Thermodynamics to claim that biological evolution, an increase in order over time, is physically impossible. The part of the law they omit is “in a closed system.” Organisms are open systems: they capture energy from the sun, food, or ocean vents to carve out temporary pockets of order in their bodies and nests while they dump heat and waste into the environment, increasing disorder in the world as a whole. Organisms’ use of energy to maintain their integrity against the press of entropy is a modern explanation of the principle of conatus (effort or striving), which Spinoza defined as “the endeavor to persist and flourish in one’s own being,” and which was a foundation of several Enlightenment-era theories of life and mind.

2. A force or impulse.

   Synonym: nisus

   • 1665, Robert Hooke, Micrographia:

     [E]ach part so moved does by that motion exert a conatus of protruding and displacing all the adjacent Particles.

• conation
• conative

• conatus on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• uncoats, Canutos, scanout, co-aunts, toucans

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [koːˈnaː.tʊs]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [koˈnaː.tus]

Perfect active participle of cōnor (“try, attempt”).

cōnātus (feminine cōnāta, neuter cōnātum); first/second-declension participle

1. tried, attempted, having tried.

First/second-declension adjective.

From cōnor (“try, attempt”) + -tus.

cōnātus m (genitive cōnātūs); fourth declension

1. attempt, effort, exertion, struggle

   Synonyms: studium, opus, opera, labor, cūra, intēnsiō, mōlīmen, mōlēs, pulvis

Fourth-declension noun.

• → English: conatus
• → Italian: conato
• → Spanish: conato

• “conatus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “conatus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "conatus", in Charles du Fresne du Cange, Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• Carl Meißner; Henry William Auden (1894), Latin Phrase-Book‎^[1], London: Macmillan and Co.
  • to persevere in one's resolve: in incepto or conatu perstare
    
  • to give up one's project: incepto or conatu desistere
    
• conatus in Ramminger, Johann (16 July 2016 (last accessed)), Neulateinische Wortliste: Ein Wörterbuch des Lateinischen von Petrarca bis 1700‎^[2], pre-publication website, 2005-2016