vivify
Americanverb (used with object)
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to give life to; animate; quicken.
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to enliven; brighten; sharpen.
verb
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to bring to life; animate
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to make more vivid or striking
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of vivify
First recorded in 1535–45; late Middle English from Middle French vivifier from Late Latin vīvificāre ). See vivi-, -fy ( def. )
Explanation
When you vivify something, you bring new excitement or life to it. If you decide to liven up your boring apartment by painting the walls every color of the rainbow, you can say that you're trying to vivify your home. You might vivify your family's meals by experimenting with exotic spices or vivify your school by hiring circus performers to ride unicycles up and down the halls. The Latin root word of vivify is vivus, or "alive," which is also the origin of the closely related word vivid.
Vocabulary lists containing vivify
"Train Time," Vocabulary from the short story
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"Train Time" by D'Arcy McNickle
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This Week In Culture: March 7–13, 2020
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“Like a novelist,” Rafferty wrote, “he finds the human details that vivify the character.”
From Washington Post ● Mar. 9, 2020
Two moving and expansive books about enduring American symbols vivify abstract ideas through surprisingly specific images.
From New York Times ● Sep. 4, 2018
He will vivify the church by creating a vacuum.
From Slate ● Jan. 12, 2017
Williams made a conscious decision to vivify the film with almost completely new thematic ideas.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 18, 2015
As the years accumulate the emotions that vivify the lowest grades of astral matter are not so much in evidence and the matter in which they are expressed loses its vitality.
From Elementary Theosophy by Rogers, L. W. (Louis William)
Elizabeth II’s 1953 coronation ceremony vivified for war-fatigued Britain the collective sentiments that make a community.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 8, 2022
However, the graceful Croatian was vivified into a grinding fightback in the second set, saving four break points and was one point away from levelling in the 10th game.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 28, 2018
In Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power, the eminent presidential historian Robert Dallek has deftly vivified the two practitioners of realpolitik and their world.
From Forbes ● Jun. 13, 2014
The movie is a grim diptych of damaged daughter and destructive mother that is vivified only by the transcendent performances.
From New York Times ● Apr. 28, 2011
She seemed molded from fire and air, and vivified at some Voltaic pile of August thunder-clouds heaped against the sunset.
From Pierre; or The Ambiguities by Melville, Herman
The shrewd, vivifying juxtaposition pits crude, primal, static stone, its huge weight pressing the ground beneath your feet, against sleek, industrially elegant windmills spinning overhead to catch the invisible airstream and generate similarly imperceptible energy.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 17, 2025
Opie’s backdrop is a damask drapery in dark green, red’s vivifying complementary color.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 31, 2024
But Gurnah avoids that misstep by gently vivifying the lives of a few African characters in all their rich humanity and even their comedy, without sentimentality or condescension.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 23, 2022
But this was Act I of “The Iceman Lab,” Target Margin Theater’s bold, playful, vivifying re-creation of the Eugene O’Neill classic at Here, and a friendly glam-rock band was filling the room with sound.
From New York Times ● Jun. 20, 2016
The old masters with vivifying imaginations had brought the glories of nature to worship with them, had hung as it were in their porch, this lovely landscape.
From Heroic Spain by O'Reilly, Elizabeth Boyle
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
