More distantly, compare also vigil, vigor, and vital, from similar PIE roots and meanings (lively, power, life), via Latin.
Sentence Examples
ceiving nerve from vis ce.pe, The cerebro-pedal connecceral loop.
When the bridges broke down, unarmed soldiers, people from Moscow and women with children who were with the French transport, all--carried on by vis inertiae-- pressed forward into boats and into the ice-covered water and did not, surrender.
Assuming as an axiom that the centre of gravity of any number of interdependent bodies cannot rise higher than the point from which it fell, he arrived, by anticipating in the particular case the general principle of the conservation of vis viva, at correct although not strictly demonstrated conclusions.
But no one can tell whether the study of physiological phenomena in general, and of nervous phenomena in particular, will not reveal to us, besides the vis viva or kinetic energy of which Leibnitz spoke, and the potential energy which was a later and necessary adjunct, some new kind of energy which may differ from the other two by rebelling against calculation" (Bergson, Time and Free Will, Eng.
The one essential property of matter is its inactivity, vis inertiae (accepted later by Monboddo).