Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The lush greenness of flourishing vegetation.
  • noun Vigorous greenery.
  • noun A fresh or flourishing condition.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Greenness; specifically, the fresh green of vegetation; also, green vegetation itself: as, the verdure of spring.
  • noun Hence Freshness in general.
  • noun 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,”

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Green; greenness; freshness of vegetation.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The greenness of lush or growing vegetation; also: the vegetation itself.
  • noun hence A condition of health and vigour.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the lush appearance of flourishing vegetation
  • noun green foliage

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French, from verd, green, from Latin viridis.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French verdure.

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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.

    Rural Hours 1887

  • 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.

    Chapter 2 2010

  • 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.

    Chapter 19 2010

  • 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.

    Hawaii's Story, by Hawaii's Queen 1898

  • The verdure is magnificent; the town is submerged in it, and flowers are everywhere.

    In Seven Stages: A Flying Trip Around the World 1891

  • 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.

    In Seven Stages: A Flying Trip Around the World 1891

  • 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.

    A Trip to Venus John Munro 1889

  • Here in one place there rises a barren rock, perfectly bare of verdure, which is called Mount Misery.

    Cord and Creese James De Mille

  • 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.

    In the Days of Poor Richard Irving Bacheller 1904

  • On the withered, bent tree the foliage is smaller, more scanty -- but the verdure is the same as ever.

    A Reckless Character And Other Stories Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev 1850

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  • "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

    April 20, 2008