The phrase "a certain desire" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to refer to a specific but not explicitly defined wish or longing that someone may have.
Example: "She felt a certain desire to explore the world and experience new cultures."
Alternatives: "a particular longing" or "a specific wish".
When you talk about him to friends, you say how polite he always was, how he aroused but also froze a certain desire to protect him.
We look to these images as satisfying a certain desire on the part of the writer — "a room of one's own" — a desire with which we can identify.
Thus, fear might be a combination of a certain thought (the thought that there is an abyss ahead), a certain desire (a desire not to fall), and certain sensations (those peculiar to anxiety).
If we're really in such a rush, it would make a lot more sense to use the approval, appropriations, and contracting system already in place, rather than inventing a whole new bureaucracy, for speed.One senses Mr Obama emphasised infrastructure make-work schemes to help satisfy a certain desire among liberals to see a greater direct government effort to boost employment.
There was a certain desire to know which was stronger, this maid's loyalty to us, or her loyalty to God: part of me was keen to wage war with this other world into which she escaped, sometimes returning with angry threats.
First, the required intention is a second-order attitude, an attitude about (among other things) another of the agent's own attitudes (a certain desire of hers).
The effectiveness of the proposed device to track a certain desired force with step changes under different feed rates has been examined through polishing experiments.
Automatic gain control adjusts the received signal strength in the receive chain, either via analog or digital gain, to a certain desired power suitable for best performance.
The second controller ensures the local asymptotic stabilization of a certain desired limit cycle and is based on switching surfaces design.
In a plot of the slope of the heat withdrawal rate line vs the dimensionless residence time the area is determined in which operation is feasible and safe when a certain desired yield or selectivity has to be achieved.
The objective is to design the formation tracking algorithm such that a certain follower follows the trajectory of the leader while also maintains a certain desired geometric formation with other agents simultaneously.
