vitalism
noun
vitalism is a noun meaning “The doctrine that life involves some immaterial "vital force", and cannot be explained scientifically” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled V-I-T-A-L-I-S-M, and it appears about once in every 17 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of vitalism is vitalisms.
What does vitalism mean?
noun
- 1
The doctrine that life involves some immaterial "vital force", and cannot be explained scientifically.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of vitalism
- vitalisms plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is vitalism?
Vitalism appears about once in every 17 million words in written English, the 125,655th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Vitalism in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense doctrine that life involves a "vital force":
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | vitalisme |
| German | Vitalismus |
| Portuguese | vitalismo |
| Spanish | vitalismo |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does vitalism come from?
From vital + -ism.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).