vigour

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle English, from Anglo-Norman vigour, from Old French vigor, from Latin vigor, from vigeo (“thrive, flourish”), from Proto-Indo-European.

Related to vigil, and more distantly compare vis and vital, from similar Proto-Indo-European roots and meanings (lively, power, life), via Latin.

Pronunciation

  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɪɡə(ɹ)

Noun

vigour (countable and uncountable, plural vigours)

  1. Active strength or force of body or mind; capacity for exertion, physically, intellectually, or morally; force; energy.
    • 1717, John Dryden (tr.), Metamorphoses By Ovid‎, Book the Twelfth:
      The vigour of this arm was never vain
  2. (biology) Strength or force in animal or force in animal or vegetable nature or action.
    A plant grows with vigour.
  3. Strength; efficacy; potency.
    • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost:
      But in the fruithful earth: there first receiv'd / His beams, unactive else, their vigour find.

Usage notes

Vigour and its derivatives commonly imply active strength, or the power of action and exertion, in distinction from passive strength, or strength to endure.

Derived terms

Translations

active strength or force of body or mind; capacity for exertion, physically, intellectually, or morally; force; energy
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.

Old French

Noun

vigour m (oblique plural vigours, nominative singular vigours, nominative plural vigour)

  1. Alternative form of vigur
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