These words all denote states or attitudes of keen enjoyment, invigoration or vitality. Zest expresses dynamic vigour together with uninhabited sensuous delight: The remarkable aspect of the life of Don Juan was not the number of women he seduced but the zest with which he seduced them. In some contexts gusto and zest are interchangeable: He ate with zest (or gusto ). But gusto , while intensely felt, is commonly associated with single events of short duration, whereas zest may signal a more profound or enduring characteristic.

• After his illness he lost his zest for life; They traded insults with gusto .

Energy emphasizes the vigour of physical action rather than a dynamic motivation. To eat with energy , for instance, suggests nothing more than the expenditure of a good deal of effort in hastily transferring food from plate to mouth, whereas eating with zest or with gusto expresses keen appreciation of the food. Energy is often used as an enduring quality: A man of energy , he took a brisk stroll every morning before breakfast.

Drive is an informal word used to denote energy stimulated by ambition: he has lots of drive to get ahead in his work. This use of drive may have been influenced by the word’s psychological meaning of a strong, motivating power or stimulus: The sex drive .

Zip is an onomatopoeic word derived from the sharp sound of a bullet passing through air or the sudden tearing of cloth, and suggests energy, get-up-and-go, vitality: He has plenty of zip ; a song that has zip . In the United States zip had a revival of use with the adoption by the U.S. Post Office of the acronym ZIP (Zone Improvement Plan), a post-code system to speed mail deliveries. Used as a verb, zip denotes going at great speed: jets that zip across the Pacific. Pep is virtually synonymous with zip , but has an overtone of spicy, stimulating vigour: she sings with lots of pep . Pep is used also with "pill " to denote a medication that may create a sensation of vigour: He took a pep-pill to help him stay awake. No doubt there will always be new, ephemeral, attractive-sounding words meaning the same as zip . One of these could be zing , which is enjoying considerable popularity, and in America a new fad word replacing zip in many contexts is pizazz (also spelt pizzazz , pzzazz , pazazz , and may other ways). The best current translation seems to be "that extra something" ?an unnameable quality that invests someone or something with zip , vitality and irresistible appeal. As one might have guessed, the word, like so many other slang expressions, has been adopted by advertising and fashion writers because of its attraction to young buyers: a miniskirt with pizazz ! When applied to people pizazz means something like grace and distinction.

• The crowds gape wherever he goes; he has, an a word, pizazz .

But fad words change so rapidly that it would be foolhardy to predict what this word will mean in one year or five years from now, or whether it will still be used at all.

Brio , meaning spirit, suggests exuberant, often careless, vitality.

• He spoke with tremendous brio ; his speech, always loud no matter where he was, was punctuated with brilliant but unrepeatable oaths and cheerful slanders, and his gestures were appropriately flamboyant.

As a musical direction, con brio means with spirit, in a lively manner.

Dash and verve both emphasize a great and vigorous energy , but dash points more particularly to a brilliant or flamboyant style carried out with sophistication and speed, whereas verve stresses the enthusiasm and untiring nature of the effort.

• Ethel Merman sings with verve ; He toasted our health with exquisite courtesy and entertained us with considerable dash .

Panache is derived from the Latin word for feather, and its literal meaning is a plume or bunch of feathers, especially when worn as an ornament on a helmet. Panache, in its more common sense, is thus a wit or brilliance of style with which something is done or said: the aristocratic jewel thief who pulls of his jobs with elegance and panache . Dash and panache both suggest an elegant independence of spirit amounting to an indifference to or contempt for popular manners or morals.