Definitions
Wiktionary
- n. The life force or vital principle posited in the philosophy of Henri Bergson; any mysterious or creative vital principle.
Etymologies
- From French élan vital, coined by Henri Bergson. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Your Hormé or élan vital is pushing you to evolve new and higher forms of the Libido.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘élan vital’.
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Learned (or Encountered) in Reading
I have a list for words learned from Newsweek; here's where I keep all the stuff from other shit I read.
Except when I'm looking stuff up and find new words that way. Those go on their...cellie, laminectomy, mridangam, terroir, hypospadias, crus, corpora cavernosa, crura, uretheral meatus, bartholin's gland, coloquintida, colopexy and 921 more...
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Philosophical
Hegelianism, hylism, hylozoism, immaterialism, indeterminism, intuitionism, Kantianism, logicism, monism, nihilism, nominalism, objectivism and 44 more...
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la baguette
bête noire, l'esprit d'escalier, noblesse oblige, cause célèbre, coup de grâce, belle époque, carte blanche, de rigueur, outré, sang-froid, force majeure, enfant terrible and 44 more...
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Obscurities & Oddities
Words not for general usage, more trivia.
postilion., defenestration, zwieback, trull, élan vital, wind-broken
Tweets
Looking for tweets for élan vital.
chained_bear "German generals, for example, had decided to bleed France into submission by matching it death for death at Verdun, believing that Germany's greater population would leave it victorious. The French later replied with their own massive offensive, believing that their élan vital would triumph."
—John M. Barry, The Great Influenza (NY: Penguin Books, 2004), 119 Feb 13, 2009