How to Use prime mover in a Sentence

prime mover

noun
  • She was the prime mover behind the town's annual summer festival.
  • For him, low rates weren’t the prime mover of the troubles.
    Michael S. Derby, WSJ, 13 Oct. 2017
  • The lefty was the prime mover of the A's nine-run inning Sunday.
    Henry Schulman, SFChronicle.com, 18 Aug. 2020
  • In this case, the prime mover was Germany, with French support.
    New York Times, 25 June 2021
  • There is no reason to mention Yoko as the prime mover in this dust-up.
    Washington Post, 25 Mar. 2021
  • There is no reason to mention Yoko as the prime mover in this dustup.
    Amy Dickinson, oregonlive, 25 Mar. 2021
  • It is said to be a prime mover of inflation in the economy.
    George Calhoun, Forbes, 3 Oct. 2022
  • Alan Stern was a prime mover behind those efforts, going all the way back to 1990.
    Corey S Powell, Discover Magazine, 10 July 2015
  • From the first, Dario was prime mover, energizer, and star.
    Tim Parks, The New York Review of Books, 12 Mar. 2020
  • That wasn’t true, and Rosenstein’s anger at being portrayed as the prime mover quickly forced the White House to backpedal.
    William Saletan, Slate Magazine, 15 June 2017
  • The world changed in ways that lined up perfectly for Pelé, gilding his mystique, and TV was a prime mover.
    Kurt Streeter, New York Times, 30 Dec. 2022
  • Freewheeling and alive with color, the show puts Taeuber-Arp in her rightful place as a prime mover among the Dadaists of wartime Zurich.
    New York Times, 26 Nov. 2021
  • Energy is the most critical element of life and the prime mover of all things.
    Eric Kaufmann, Forbes, 3 Jan. 2022
  • Around the same time, Kirby was the prime mover on a Thor story about a prophecy of the end of the title character’s legion of Norse gods.
    Abraham Riesman, Vulture, 18 Mar. 2021
  • One of the prime movers in that evolution is skeptical about the current boomlet.
    Ann Hornaday, Washington Post, 20 June 2019
  • Videos taken at the scene showed a queue of military vehicles behind the prime mover.
    Heather Chen, CNN, 29 Aug. 2022
  • In the end, the only candidate who refused to release one page of one return that year was Richard Nixon, the prime mover in the chain reaction.
    Ash Carter, Town & Country, 26 Dec. 2012
  • Instead, focus on making your glutes and hamstrings the prime movers throughout each rep.
    Jeff Tomko, Men's Health, 15 June 2023
  • Co-owner Bagwell, who’s been the prime mover at Parkside Cafe over the past 16 months, wanted to the business to continue, Knight said.
    Mary Colurso | McOlurso@al.com, al, 19 Oct. 2021
  • In the 1960s, Crosby was a prime mover in the Los Angeles music scene that spun together folk, rock, country and psychedelia.
    Jon Pareles, New York Times, 20 Jan. 2023
  • Trump remains the prime mover and the biggest figure in the Republican Party.
    Chris Cillizza, CNN, 12 Apr. 2021
  • Ema moves with a dancer’s need for constant flux and is also the plot’s prime mover, uninterested in the whys of her want and only in taking the steps to fill it.
    Mark Olsen Staff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 13 Aug. 2021
  • Firefighters were able to save the prime mover and first trailer, but not the B trailer that was carrying a load of toilet paper.
    Fox News, 23 Mar. 2020
  • Not yet 30, MBS wielded tremendous power, and became a prime mover of the reform many thought necessary for the Kingdom.
    Steve Kurtz, Fox News, 15 Mar. 2018
  • Poor, who’s been a prime mover for Secret Stages since its inception, pointed to other factors, too.
    Mary Colurso | McOlurso@al.com, al, 16 Mar. 2022
  • Andre, 39, is the visionary behind the project, buying the old theater and enlisting his parents as prime movers on scene.
    Mary Colurso | McOlurso@al.com, al, 12 Sep. 2019
  • The Tribune noted that crime is the prime mover of this growing trend in their piece, also fueled by the financial and emotional stress of the coronavirus.
    Kevin L. Clark, Essence, 8 Mar. 2022
  • The feline films and the simulation revealed that fluid inertia is the prime mover in forming the column of liquid that rises with the tongue into the mouth.
    John Matson, Scientific American, 11 Nov. 2010
  • Gilbert had become a prime mover of the downtown revival, and everyone wondered what his illness and lengthy convalescence would mean for the city.
    John Gallagher, Detroit Free Press, 28 Nov. 2019
  • The prime mover has been Leonard Leo, the society’s executive vice president.
    Bob Egelko, SFChronicle.com, 8 July 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'prime mover.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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