vigour

• vigor (US)
• vygour (obsolete)

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.

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• Rhymes: -ɪɡə(ɹ)

vigour (countable and uncountable, plural vigours)

1. Active strength or force of body or mind; capacity for exertion, physically, intellectually, or morally; 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 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.

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

• envigorate
• vigorous
• hybrid vigor/hybrid vigour

• vegetable
• vigil

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

1. Alternative form of vigur