Vitality

How to spell vitality

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce vitality

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does vitality mean?

1. nounThe state of being strong, active, and full of energy or life.

Vitality in a sentence

• Regular exercise restored much of his former vitality.

• The festival brought a sense of vitality back to the old market square.

Where does vitality come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin vitalitas, meaning 'the quality of being alive', which was built on the adjective vitalis, 'belonging to life', and ultimately on the noun vita, simply 'life'. English borrowed it in the late 1500s, at first to mean the basic principle that distinguishes living things from dead matter, and only later did it broaden into the familiar modern sense of energy, vigour, and the capacity to endure. The same Latin vita lies behind a whole family of recognisable English words, including 'vital', 'vitamin' (a coinage for substances thought essential to life), and 'revitalise'. Knowing that the heart of the word is vit, meaning life, helps fix the tricky middle: it is vit, not 'vet' or 'vit-a', and the ending settles into the common -ality pattern. The stress lands on the second syllable, which can mask the unstressed vowels that follow.

How the word is built

• vit- (from Latin vita: life)
• -al (relating to)
• -ity (noun of quality)