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VITALITY
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
An energetic style
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("vitality" is a kind of...):
energy; muscularity; vigor; vigour; vim (an imaginative lively style (especially style of writing))
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "vitality"):
light; spark; sparkle; twinkle (merriment expressed by a brightness or gleam or animation of countenance)
Derivation:
vital (full of spirit; full of life)
Sense 2
Meaning:
The property of being able to survive and grow
Example:
the vitality of a seed
Synonyms:
animation; vitality
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("vitality" is a kind of...):
aliveness; animateness; liveness (the property of being animated; having animal life as distinguished from plant life)
Attribute:
dead (no longer having or seeming to have or expecting to have life)
Derivation:
vital (manifesting or characteristic of life)
vital (full of spirit; full of life)
Sense 3
Meaning:
(biology) a hypothetical force (not physical or chemical) once thought by Henri Bergson to cause the evolution and development of organisms
Synonyms:
elan vital; life force; vital force; vitality
Classified under:
Nouns denoting natural phenomena
Hypernyms ("vitality" is a kind of...):
force ((physics) the influence that produces a change in a physical quantity)
Domain category:
biological science; biology (the science that studies living organisms)
Derivation:
vital (performing an essential function in the living body)
Sense 4
Meaning:
A healthy capacity for vigorous activity
Example:
he seemed full of vim and vigor
Synonyms:
energy; vim; vitality
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("vitality" is a kind of...):
good health; healthiness (the state of being vigorous and free from bodily or mental disease)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "vitality"):
juice (energetic vitality)
ch'i; chi; ki; qi (the circulating life energy that in Chinese philosophy is thought to be inherent in all things; in traditional Chinese medicine the balance of negative and positive forms in the body is believed to be essential for good health)
Derivation:
vital (full of spirit; full of life)
Context examples:
Having gained her degree, she was doing no more studying; and he, having worked all vitality out of his mind and body, was doing no writing.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
The Sun (life and vitality) and new moon (opportunity) welcomed Jupiter (good fortune), Mercury (news), Saturn (long-term gain), and Pluto (inner power).
(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)
A constitution of iron and the vitality of the Wild were White Fang's inheritance, and he clung to life, the whole of him and every part of him, in spirit and in flesh, with the tenacity that of old belonged to all creatures.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
The cloven halves were not broken from each other, for the firm base and strong roots kept them unsundered below; though community of vitality was destroyed—the sap could flow no more: their great boughs on each side were dead, and next winter's tempests would be sure to fell one or both to earth: as yet, however, they might be said to form one tree—a ruin, but an entire ruin.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
He's as clever as they make 'em—a full-charged battery of force and vitality, but a quarrelsome, ill-conditioned faddist, and unscrupulous at that. He had gone the length of faking some photographs over the South American business.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Not a thing seemed to be stirring, but all to be grim and fixed as death or fate; so that a thin streak of white mist, that crept with almost imperceptible slowness across the grass towards the house, seemed to have a sentience and a vitality of its own.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
The spur of ambition was blunted; he had no vitality with which to feel the prod of it.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
The twelfth house is the last house of the horoscope before you loop around and enter the first house again, the one ruling identity, personality, appearance, and vitality.
(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)
Even at that moment of tension I found time for amazement at the discovery that he was quite a short man, his head not higher than my shoulder—a stunted Hercules whose tremendous vitality had all run to depth, breadth, and brain.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He was puzzled by countless short stories, written lightly and cleverly he confessed, but without vitality or reality.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
