A vertex is just an xyz coordinate...
In OpenGl, if you wanted to draw an object, you could make every vertex yourself if you wanted to using glVertex(x,y,z)...
glBegin(GL_TRIANGLES);
glVertex3f(0.0,1.0,0.0);
glVertex3f(-1.0,0.0,0.0);
glVertex3f(1.0,0.0,0.0);
glEnd();