Meaning of vitative(ness)
I've seen the word vitativeness used in a book about the history of writing, referring to a list of descriptive words written in 1900. Vitative(ness) is not in my Oxford dictionary, nor dictionary.com. What does it mean?
Vitativeness is in the Oxford English Dictionary, where it is described as a term used in phrenology (the scientific study of the mind). The meaning is given as ‘the love of life, the desire to live, regarded as a special faculty of the mind or brain.’ There are two supporting citations from the nineteenth century.