1938 5 137 In fact they are not the real motives, but a kind of conventional substitutes [sic], ‘motive pattern’ as we may call them.
1941 A. Koestler 232 No attempt to discriminate, to discover political motive-patterns.
1998 (Nexis) 21 Nov. 15 Gibbon's socialism was estranged from the totalitarian ‘socialism’ of the 1930s; and to those who understand the motive pattern of socialism as emancipation from oppression his sort of socialism was seen at its best in Grey Granite.