The quantity of motion of a moving body, measured as the product of its mass and velocity; the impetus gained by a moving object or a course of events.
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Latin17th centurywell-attested
Borroweddirectly from Latin mōmentum (movement, moving power, impulse, a brief point in time), a contraction of movimentum, from movēre (to move, to set in motion), from PIE *mew- (to push away, to move). Thesame PIE root gives Latin mōbilis (moveable), mōtiō (motion), and English move, mobile, motor, emotion, and remote. English borrowed this root twice via different pathways: first as moment throughOld
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Momentum and moment arethe same Latin word borrowed twice. 'Moment' entered English through Old French in the fourteenth century and lost its Latin ending. 'Momentum' was re-borrowed directly from Latin in 1699 as a technical physics term by scientists who wanted
nothing), and again as momentum directly from Latin in the 17th century as a physics term used by Newton and Leibniz for the quantity of motion in a moving body (mass × velocity). The physicist's momentum