Primary
''galvanic'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20250719001907-00-⌔
galvanic - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Adjective
galvanic (comparative more galvanic, superlative most galvanic)
- Of or pertaining to galvanism; electric.
- ✤ [S]he was quivering like a galvanic battery with the suppressed force of some powerful emotion.1
- (by extension) Energetic; vigorous.
- ✤ Whether the town existed during Mr. Tapley’s time I have not been able to learn… At that moment a galvanic motion had been pumped into it by the war movements of General Halleck.2
- ✤ Then he clenched his fists, and, with an agility astonishing in a man of his years, indulged in a series of galvanic little hops in front of the astounded Peter Truefitt.3
- ✤ But the main event may well end up being the performance of Brahms’s galvanic Piano Concerto No. 1, with the exhilarating British pianist Paul Lewis.4
- Of a current that is not alternating, as opposed to faradic.
- ✤ Physicians used galvanic currents, which required only a galvanic power source, and faradic treatments, which utilized an “alternating” induction coil.5
Etymology
From French galvanique, named after Italian physiologist Luigi Aloisio Galvani (1737–1798) + -ique.
Pronunciation
- IPA: /ɡælˈvænɪk/
- Audio (Southern England): 🔊
Printed 2026-06-28.
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Link to original Footnotes
1871, Harriet Beecher Stowe, chapter 22, in Pink and White Tyranny: ↩
1862, Anthony Trollope, chapter 6, in North America: ↩
1908, W. W. Jacobs, chapter 19, in Salthaven: ↩
2014 April 4, Zachary Woolfe, “Music: How the Centuries Will Play Out”, in New York Times, retrieved 12 May 2014: ↩
2005, Carolyn Thomas de la Pena, chapter 3, in The Body Electric: How Strange Machines Built the Modern American: ↩
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