Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An effort or endeavor to realize an aim.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Effort; endeavor; conatus.
- n. A genus of small hawks of the family Falconidæ, containing such as are called in Great Britain sparrow-hawks. See Accipiter.
- n. The generative impulse occurring periodically, as with many creatures in the spring.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A striving; an effort; a conatus.
- n. The periodic procreative desire manifested in the spring by birds, etc.
- n. The contraction of the diaphragm and abdominal muscles to evacuate feces or urine.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an effortful attempt to attain a goal
Etymologies
- Latin nīsus, from past participle of nītī, to strive. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“nisus"; not even _struggle_, in the sense of _contention_, an endeavour an effort, a strain.”
“nisus' will, I think, be more profitably employed in enkindling meditation on holiness, and thirstings after the mind of Christ.”
“Barfield believes in a nisus, a struggling to be born and to emerge into consciousness of the internal ordering principle by which a plant develops, an embryo develops, etc.”
“And the effort of that nexus is, as Barfield likes to put it, a nisus — and a very useful word.”
“While our concerns surely be grounded in "abandonment, exposure, and vulnerability," it is worth staying awake to the evolutionary nisus that beckons.”
“The temptation to prove or disprove something with an aphorism or epigram secures instant juvenile glee, but nisus of impelling wider perspective flee.”
“He insists that religious belief as a whole is not superstition, and that it is true so far as it is an expression of a ˜nisus to totality™ or a ˜move to wholeness.™”
“The following bird species occur in the Laurissilva forest: Accipiter nisus, Apus unicolor and Fringila coelebs maderensis.”
“The attitude that words may be discarded -- indeed, that words have caducity at all -- is not salubriously abstergent, but reflects an agrestic nisus that all cultivated English speakers must eschew.”
“The operation of a nisus perhaps needs the tension of a conflictsome scenario and hence, the actual hardly helps.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘nisus’.
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phrontistery - n
from phrontistery.info
nymphology, nympholepsy, nyctophobia, nymphean, nyctograph, nyctanthous, nyctalopia, nychthemeral, nutricial, nutrice, nutrication, nychthemeron and 340 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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quotato's Words
prospicience, appoggiatura, actually, thrum, nisus, univocal, eschatology, concupiscible, penury, psychedelic, vapid, braggadocio and 107 more...
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My Treasures
Well everyone's lists are favourites or pets or useful terms, no? These are mine.
mephitic, cagastric, wulm, scaevity, seplasiary, sevidical, sevous, soleated, soloecal, sputcheon, stagma, temerate and 173 more...
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fbharjo's Words
jumelle, kef, kenspeckle, lautitious, essentic, pilpulistic, impavid, cicurant, clou, chrysostomic, miasma, teleology and 1625 more...
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mussitation
it is better to be alert
mussitation, skeuomorph, indigen, nostrum, bestir, obreption, nisus, fettle, midden, philtre, apodictic, mendicant and 4 more...
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stibbons's Words
uncanny, cantankerous, gak, panache, wobbly, futz, gedanken, ululate, buffoon, tundra, intertubes, treacherous and 16 more...
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rduke's Words
misguggle, ken, sere, etiolated, gelid, digladiate, popinjay, bathykolpian, conglaciation, hyperborean, callipygian, vagile and 1253 more...
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Miscellany, pt. n
nidifugous, napifolious, nimravid, nirvil, nephsystem, nepte, niello, neeze, nebelwerfer, naupegus, naumachia, neoteny and 18 more...
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billifer's Words
phallocracy, quarto, libidinous, antihero, droog, sesquipedalian, frottage, quixotic, persnickety, agog, proclivity, logorrhea and 59 more...
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Words for D
either describe D or would be good in his writings!
despumate, eisegesis, badaud, saccharine, heartsease, ineffable, manship, maven, risible, literati, crimson, pugilist and 41 more...
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quotato an effort or striving toward a particular goal or attainment; impulse. Dec 1, 2006