The inherent power or efficacy of something (now only in phrases). [from 13th c.]
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There was a virtue in the wave;His limbs, that, stiff with toil,Dragg’d heavy, from the copious draught receiv’dLightness and supple strength.
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1801, Robert Southey, Thalaba the Destroyer, London: […] [F]or T[homas] N[orton] Longman and O[wen] Rees, […], by Biggs and Cottle, […], →OCLC:
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Here are the glasses, Meg. But I am afraid that the virtue has gone from them, and now they are only glass. Perhaps they were meant to help once and only on Camazotz.
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1962, Madeleine L’Engle, “Aunt Beast”, in A Wrinkle in Time, New York, N.Y.: Ariel Books, →OCLC; republished New York, N.Y.: Ariel Books, 1973 printing, →ISBN, page 189:
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many Egyptians still worry that the Brotherhood, by virtue of discipline and experience, would hold an unfair advantage if elections were held too soon.
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2011 February 17, “The autumn of the patriarchs”, in The Economist: