1 [C,usually sing,U] ~ (to do sth) a sudden strong wish or need to do sth, without stopping to think about the results:
He had a sudden impulse to stand up and sing. * I resisted the impulse to laugh. * Her first impulse was to run away. * The door was open and on (an) impulse she went inside. * He tends to act on impulse.
2 [C] (technical) a force or movement of energy that causes sth else to react:
nerve / electrical impulses * The impulse is conducted along the length of the wire.
3 [C,usually sing,U] (formal) something that causes sb/sth to do sth or to develop and make progress:
to give an impulse to the struggling car industry * He was motivated by the impulse for social reform.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for impulse is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is impulse a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, impulse is tagged as noun.
Does impulse appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — impulse appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
