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• nerval
  nerval

  adjective

  neural.
• Nerval
  Nerval

  noun

  Gérard de Gérard Labrunie, 1808–55, French writer.

nerval

¹ American  

[nur-vuhl] / ˈnɜr vəl /

adjective

1. neural.

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Nerval ² American  

[ner-val] / nɛrˈval /

noun

1. Gérard de Gérard Labrunie, 1808–55, French writer.

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Nerval British  

/ nɛrval /

noun

1. Gérard de (ʒerar də), real name Gérard Labrunie. 1808–55, French poet, noted esp for the sonnets of mysticism, myth, and private passion in Les Chimères (1854)

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Etymology

Origin of nerval

1630–40; < Late Latin nervālis of, belonging to nerves, equivalent to Latin nerv ( us ) nerve + -ālis -al ¹

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Nerval

Handel bids us “Rejoice Greatly”; we do so with the benefit of a weirdo 19th century Frenchman, one Gérard de Nerval.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 11, 2026

“Notre Dame is good and old: Perhaps we’ll even see her bury Paris, whose birth she witnessed,” the poet Gérard de Nerval once said.

From Seattle Times ● Jul. 17, 2019

Nerval said he kept the crustacean as a pet because it did not make noise and because it knew the secrets of the deep.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 19, 2017

God knows, Kafka is incomparable, and there are plenty of French writers who mean a lot to me — Flaubert, Baudelaire, Proust, Sartre, Sarraute, the oddball Symbolist Gérard de Nerval.

From Time ● Nov. 28, 2012

Even if Gerard de Nerval did walk the boulevards trolling a lobster by a blue ribbon—that is no reason for judging him crazy.

From Visionaries by Huneker, James