motive

In algebraic geometry, motives (or sometimes motifs, following French usage) is a theory proposed by Alexander Grothendieck in the 1960s to unify the vast array of similarly behaved cohomology theories such as singular cohomology, de Rham cohomology, etale cohomology, and crystalline cohomology. Philosophically, a "motif" is the "cohomology essence" of a variety.