VITALITY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does vitality mean? 

• VITALITY (noun)
  The noun VITALITY has 4 senses:

1. an energetic style

2. a healthy capacity for vigorous activity

3. (biology) a hypothetical force (not physical or chemical) once thought by Henri Bergson to cause the evolution and development of organisms

4. the property of being able to survive and grow

  Familiarity information: VITALITY used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• VITALITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An energetic style

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

verve; vitality

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:

A healthy capacity for vigorous activity

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

energy; vim; vitality

Context example:

he seemed full of vim and vigor

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)

Sense 3

Meaning:

(biology) a hypothetical force (not physical or chemical) once thought by Henri Bergson to cause the evolution and development of organisms

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural phenomena

Synonyms:

elan vital; life force; vital force; vitality

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:

The property of being able to survive and grow

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

animation; vitality

Context example:

the vitality of a seed

Hypernyms ("vitality" is a kind of...):

aliveness; animateness; liveness (the property of being animated; having animal life as distinguished from plant life)

Attribute:

alive; live (possessing life)

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)

 Context examples 

Characterized by a lack of vitality or energy.

(Lethargic, NCI Thesaurus)

Mars will be in Scorpio, your first house of personality and vitality, and Pluto will be in your third house of communication.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

He was soon spilling over with vitality, and each day he saw Ruth, at the moment of meeting, she experienced the old shock of his strength and health.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

You seem to have a sort of genius for establishing relations with people—seempathy, I suppose, or animal magnetism, or youthful vitality, or something. I am conscious of it myself.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The process of declining from a higher to a lower level of effective power or vitality or essential quality.

(Degeneration, NCI Thesaurus)

That he could have gone on after receiving such an injury said much for the vitality and courage of the man.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

His muscles were surcharged with vitality, and snapped into play sharply, like steel springs.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

He had too great vitality.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

The play-hour in the evening I thought the pleasantest fraction of the day at Lowood: the bit of bread, the draught of coffee swallowed at five o'clock had revived vitality, if it had not satisfied hunger: the long restraint of the day was slackened; the schoolroom felt warmer than in the morning—its fires being allowed to burn a little more brightly, to supply, in some measure, the place of candles, not yet introduced: the ruddy gloaming, the licensed uproar, the confusion of many voices gave one a welcome sense of liberty.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)