Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The lush greenness of flourishing vegetation.
- n. Vigorous greenery.
- n. A fresh or flourishing condition: the verdure of childhood.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Greenness; specifically, the fresh green of vegetation; also, green vegetation itself: as, the verdure of spring.
- n. Hence Freshness in general.
- n. In decorative art, tapestry of which foliage or leafage on a large scale, scenery with trees, or the like, is the chief subject. Also tapis de verdure.
- To cover with or as with verdure: as, “verdured bank,”
Wiktionary
- n. The greenness of lush or growing vegetation; also: the vegetation itself.
- n. hence A condition of health and vigour.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Green; greenness; freshness of vegetation.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the lush appearance of flourishing vegetation
- n. green foliage
Etymologies
- From Old French verdure. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French, from verd, green, from Latin viridis. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Generally, our grass and foliage are refreshed by passing showers, during the warmest weather, and the beauty of the verdure is a source of great pleasure to those who come from the brown fields about New York and Philadelphia.”
“Isis, which flows beside it through meadows of exquisite verdure, is spread forth into a placid expanse of waters, which reflects its majestic assemblage of towers, and spires, and domes, embosomed among aged trees.”
“But that which had interested us most along our line of travel was the trees without a sign of leaves or blossoms, since with us the verdure is perennial; and the sight of shrubs or bushes, or even lofty trees, standing out bare of foliage or flower, struck us very strangely.”
“The verdure is magnificent; the town is submerged in it, and flowers are everywhere.”
“A lofty hall divides this one, terminating on a rear veranda, with a wide view of the precipitous white city, buried in verdure, sloping down to the flashing emerald of the bay, that is ringed with tawny hills.”
“I have used the word verdure, but it is really a misnomer, for although the prevailing tint of the foliage was a dark green, the entire forest was streaked like a rainbow with innumerable flowers, and the breeze which blew from it was laden with the most delightful perfume, Evidently it was all a howling wilderness, for we could not detect the slightest vestige of human dwellings or cultivation.”
“Here in one place there rises a barren rock, perfectly bare of verdure, which is called Mount Misery.”
“A wide space between the trees and the street had been turned into well-kept gardens, and their verdure was a pleasant thing to see.”
“On the withered, bent tree the foliage is smaller, more scanty -- but the verdure is the same as ever.”
“Many of the meadows are thickly sown with the white narcissus, and the hedges, which form their inclosures, are covered with the deepest verdure, which is finely contrasted with the pink-flowers of the almond trees, rising at intervals in the hedge-rows.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘verdure’.
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Mobying Along
looks like there's not an open Moby Dick list. So now there is.
hypos, Manhattoes, circumambulate, mole, grapnels, bowsprit, asphaltic, mazy, tranced, cataract, ungraspable, judgmatically and 227 more...
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phrontistery-v
from phrontistery.info
vaccary, vaccimulgence, vaccine, vacillate, vadelect, vade-mecum, vadimony, vadose, vafrous, vagient, vagile, vagility and 396 more...
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Open List: Greens
A lits of greens: cooked leafy vegetables; pigments, paint names, compound words, etc; words and phrases that pertain to or contain "green". Please add your favorites!
See this list f...greenery, collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, green shoots, viridian green, malachite green, sap green, green grocer, radish greens, beet greens, spring green and 282 more...
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♥
ambrosia, inamorata, gossamer, lily-white, hummingbird, roucoulement, poppy, daisy, calypso, lunula, lamb, dove and 1526 more...
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Words from Moby Dick
frigate, presumptuous, genteel, succor, hearthstone, gentry, factitious, bilious, insurgent, portent, enervate, genuflect and 303 more...
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Verba Silvestria
Words of the Woods or Words of the Wilds
sylvestral, sylvester, silvester, silvestrian, sylvestrian, silvatic, sylvatic, silvan, sylvan, silva, sylva, nemorose and 108 more...
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i like
words to use, memorize, lavish with my affections
empyreal, quiddity, esthetic, crepitation, dénouement, feuilleton, macule, napthalene, förutse, verdure, montane, decalcomania and 105 more...
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Good Words
fenestering, cetic, immanent, quickening, archetypal, shibboleth, soma, wetware, heritable, Apotheosis, halcyon, cellar door and 482 more...
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Quaintnesses
For those who wish no words were ever forgotten
opprobrium, tedium, encomium, odium, ire, enmity, beguile, wile, brazen, popinjay, squit, hoity-toity and 1161 more...
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Nabokov vocabulary
verisimilitude, geminate, pedantic, intervestibular, equilibrist, nictitating, anastomosis, quiddity, torus, cacahuete, undulation, pensum and 135 more...
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Nightbloom's List
adumbrate, beatific, blandiloquent, caliginous, champagne, anointed, chatoyant, chiaroscuro, diffuse, dulcet, ebullient, efflorescence and 94 more...
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Aequoria's list
affect, deleterious, nuance, pliant, verbatim, pertinent, latter, municipality, provincial, voyeuristic, circumlocution, wane and 798 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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Jane Eyre
abigail, sanguine, chancel, bourne, peremptorily, parley, unwonted, fagging, convolvuli, tarry, insuperable, execrations and 190 more...
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Vocab++
Words as I learn them.
fetid, mezzanine, hiatus, austerity, subliminal, resplendent, implacable, impugn, debase, exiguous, cirque, holster and 2538 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for verdure.

knitandpurl "It was enough to fill me with longing for country scenes that, overhanging the loose snowdrifts of the muff in which Mme Swann kept her hands, the guelder-rose snow-balls (which served very possibly in the mind of my hostess no other purpose than to compose, on the advice of Bergotte, a "Symphony in White with her furniture and her garments) should remind me that the Good Friday music in Parsifal symbolises a natural miracle which one could see performed every year if one had the sense to look for it, and assisted by the acid and heady perfume of other kinds of blossom which, although their names were unknown to me, had brought me so often to a standstill on my walks round Combray, should make Mme Swann's drawing room as virginal, as candidly in blossom without the least trace of verdure, as overladen with genuine scents of flowers, as was the little lane by Tansonville."
-- Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Revised by D.J. Enright, p 289 of the Modern Library paperback edition Apr 20, 2008