movement

UK/ˈmuːv.mənt/US/ˈmuːv.mənt/

nounA2+4 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #1,884 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: movements

Movement is something changing position, going from here to there. The curtain shifting in a draught, the queue edging forward, the twitch of a cat tail before it jumps.

The word reaches much further than that. A movement is a group of people pushing for the same change: the civil rights movement, a protest movement, the movement for cheaper housing. In music, a symphony is built of three or four movements, each a large section with its own speed and mood. The movement of a watch is the machinery inside the case, and in business movement means change in numbers — little movement in prices this week. Doctors say bowel movement for going to the toilet, so the word turns up in places a learner does not expect.

Definitions of movement

1nounmovementThe act of changing position; motion.A2+~2%
“There was no movement in the house at all.”
2noungroupA group of people working together for a shared aim.B1~94%
“The movement grew from a handful of students into a national campaign.”
3nounmainOne of the main sections of a longer piece of music such as a symphony.B2~2%
“The slow movement is the one everybody knows.”
4nouninsideThe working parts inside a watch or clock.C1~2%
“The case was cheap but the movement was Swiss.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 12 sentences found in the wild and placed 12 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Where it comes from

Movement came through Old French from Latin movēre, to move. The same Latin verb gave English moment and momentum, so all three are one word wearing different clothes. It displaced the older native word styring, which survives now only as stirring.

Old French
movement
Middle English
mevement
English, today
movement

From Middle English mevement, from Old French movement. From Middle English mevement, from Old French movement (modern French mouvement), from movoir + -ment; cf. also Medieval Latin movimentum, from Latin movere (“move”). a doublet of moment and momentum. In this sense, displaced native styring, which led to Modern English stirring. Morphologically move + ment.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove, Music & Instruments

First appears in chapter 2 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

movement in the wild

The Dada movement focused on rejecting prevailing ideas surrounding art, and more broadly in society.
Dada
Ball is seen as the founder of the Dada movement.
Dada
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a humanitarian movement with approximately 16 million volunteers, members, and staff worldwide.
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
The movement for civil rights, led by figures such as W.
Civil rights movement
Most sovereign citizens are not violent, but the methods the movement advocates are illegal.
Sovereign citizen movement

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

Definitions of movement

1nounmovementThe act of changing position; motion.A2+~2%

“There was no movement in the house at all.”

2noungroupA group of people working together for a shared aim.B1~94%

“The movement grew from a handful of students into a national campaign.”

3nounmainOne of the main sections of a longer piece of music such as a symphony.B2~2%

“The slow movement is the one everybody knows.”

4nouninsideThe working parts inside a watch or clock.C1~2%

“The case was cheap but the movement was Swiss.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 12 sentences found in the wild and placed 12 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.