verve

Borrowed from French verve (“rapture, animation, spirit, caprice, whim”).

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• Rhymes: -ɜː(r)v

verve (uncountable)

1. Excitement of imagination such as that which animates a poet, artist, or musician, in composing or performing
2. artistic energy and enthusiasm
3. vigour, vitality and liveliness
   • 2012 April 9, Mandeep Sanghera, “Tottenham 1 - 2 Norwich”, in BBC Sport‎:

     After spending so much of the season looking upwards, the swashbuckling style and swagger of early season Spurs was replaced by uncertainty and frustration against a Norwich side who had the quality and verve to take advantage

4. rapture, enthusiasm
5. spirit, energy
   • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, OCLC 1227855:

     Normally, this [girl] presents to the world the appearance of one who is feeling that if it isn't the best of all possible worlds, it's quite good enough to be going on with till a better one comes along. Verve, I mean, and animation and all that sort of thing. But now there was a listlessness about her [...]

• verve in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• verve in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

verve

1. (archaic) singular present subjunctive of verven

Probably from Late Latin verva, alteration of the plural of Latin verbum. Doublet of verbe.

• IPA^(key): /vɛʁv/

verve f (plural verves)

1. eloquence
2. verve, brio

• “verve” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Borrowed from French verve.

verve f (invariable)

1. verve

• brio
• estro
• vivacità