PRIME MOVER

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does prime mover mean? 

• PRIME MOVER (noun)
  The noun PRIME MOVER has 1 sense:

1. an agent that is the cause of all things but does not itself have a cause

  Familiarity information: PRIME MOVER used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PRIME MOVER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An agent that is the cause of all things but does not itself have a cause

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

first cause; prime mover; primum mobile

Context example:

God is the first cause

Hypernyms ("prime mover" is a kind of...):

causal agency; causal agent; cause (any entity that produces an effect or is responsible for events or results)

 Context examples 

Why, there's Copperfield, mother, he angrily retorted, pointing his lean finger at me, against whom all his animosity was levelled, as the prime mover in the discovery; and I did not undeceive him; there's Copperfield, would have given you a hundred pound to say less than you've blurted out!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I need not remind this audience that, though Professor Summerlee, as the head of the Committee of Investigation, has been put up to speak to-night, still it is I who am the real prime mover in this business, and that it is mainly to me that any successful result must be ascribed.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)