nisus

(nī'səs)
n., pl., nisus.
An effort or endeavor to realize an aim.

[Latin nīsus, from past participle of nītī, to strive.]

(NI-suhs)

noun, plural nisus
An effort or endeavor to realize an aim.

Etymology
Latin nisus, from past participle of niti, to strive.

Usage
"Another element of globalization, which results in part from the spread of education, is the strong nisus toward individualism." — Ninian Smart, Religion and Globalization, ReVision, Fall 1999.

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Nīsus, in Greek myth, son of Pandion and king of Megara, whose life and his city's safety depended on a lock of red hair on his head. His daughter Scylla cut it off and Nisus was turned into a osprey. The port of Nisaea was named after him. Megareus, the husband of Nisus' daughter Iphinoē, gave his name to the city.

(Latin, endeavour, impulse, effort) A central element of Aristotle's theory of nature, rejected in the Renaissance, is that change and movement in nature should be thought of as the operation of a nisus or principle somewhat like aspiration, yearning, or desire, driving things to develop into what they are drawn to being. See mover, unmoved; teleology.

/NIE sus/  a mental or physical effort to attain an end: striving

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