verve
UK/vɜːv/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
British/vəːv/
verve noun: enthusiasm, rapture, spirit, or vigour, especially of imagination such as that which animates an artist, musician, or writer, in composing or performing.
Noun
verve (uncountable)
- Enthusiasm, rapture, spirit, or vigour, especially of imagination such as that which animates an artist, musician, or writer, in composing or performing.
- His hands were strong and elegant; his experience of life evidently varied; his speech full of pith and verve; his manners forward, but perfectly presentable.1879–1880, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Stowaways”, in The Amateur Emigrant: From the Clyde to Sandy Hook, Chicago, Ill.: Stone and Kimball, published 18 January 1895, →OCLC, page 105
- They played through vacation to the fashionable of eight cities. […] Chicago he approved for a certain verve that transcended its loud accent—however, it was a Yale town, and as the Yale Glee Club was expected in a week the Triangle received only divided homage.1920 April, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, “Spires and Gargoyles”, in This Side of Paradise, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, book I (The Romantic Egotist), page 63
- A particular skill in writing.
- If he be above Virgil, and is reſolv'd to follow his own Verve (as the French call it,) the Proverb will fall heavily upon him; Who teaches himſelf, has a Fool for his Maſter.1697, John Dryden, “To the Most Honourable John, Lord Marquess of Normanby, […]”, in Virgil, translated by John Dryden, The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […]...
verve meaning in Urdu, Malayalam, Kannada and Punjabi
verve in Urdu
- enthusiasm, rapture, spirit, or vigour, especially of imagination such as that which animates an artist musician, or writer, in composing or performing — see also spirit, vigour
- جیون jīvan
verve in Malayalam
- vigour, enthusiasm, energy
- ഉന്മേഷം, നവോന്മേഷം, അത്യുത്സാഹം, ആവേശം, ഔത്സുക്യം, ചൊറുപ്പ്
verve in Kannada
- ಹುರುಪು, ಚುರುಕು
verve in Punjabi
- verve
- جیون jīvan
Examples of verve in a sentence
- Verve, I mean, and animation and all that sort of thing.1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:
- But she responded with a great deal of wit and verve:[...].Part 1 published in 1605, Part 2 in 1615, translated in 2003, Miguel de Cervantes and translated by Edith Grossman, Don Quixote, page 200:
Synonyms of verve
14 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Origin of verve
Borrowed from French verve (“animation; caprice, whim; rapture; spirit; vigour; type of expression”), probably from Late Latin verva, a variant of Latin verba (“words; discourse; expressions; language”), the plural of verbum (“word”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *werh₁- (“to say, speak”). Doublet of verb and word.
Words formed from verve
Words that rhyme with verve
9 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about verve
- What does verve mean?
- Verve means enthusiasm, rapture, spirit, or vigour, especially of imagination such as that which animates an artist, musician, or writer, in composing or performing.
- What is verve in Urdu?
- Verve in Urdu is جیون (jīvan). See Verve meaning in Urdu.
- How do you use verve in a sentence?
- Verve, I mean, and animation and all that sort of thing.
- What part of speech is verve?
- Verve is a noun.
- How do you pronounce verve?
- Verve is pronounced /vɜːv/ (UK).
Words near verve in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: verve (page history and authors); verve (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); verve (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); جیون (Punjabi) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-verve.ogg.
Cite this entry: “verve.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/verve. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.