force
[OED]: 11. Physics, etc. An influence (measurable with regard to its intensity and determinable with regard to its direction) operating on a body so as to produce an alteration or tendency to alteration of its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line; the intensity of such an influence as a measurable quantity. NOTE: Recent physicists mostly retain the word merely as the name for a measure of change of motion, not as denoting anything objectively existing as a cause.