passion

passion n

1 suffering, agony, dolor, *distress, misery

Analogous words: *trial, tribulation, cross, visitation, affliction

2 *feeling, emotion, affection, sentiment

Analogous words: inspiration, frenzy: *ecstasy, rapture, transport

3 lust, appetite, *desire, urge

Analogous words: craving, coveting (see DESIRE vb): longing, yearning, hungering or hunger, thirsting or thirst (see LONG vb): panting, aspiring, aiming (see AIM vb)

4 Passion, fervor, ardor, enthusiasm, zeal denote intense, high-wrought emotion.

Passion implies an overwhelming or driving emotion; it may be either the most abstract or the most concrete of these terms. It may be used without implication of a specific emotion; thus, a poet without passion is a poet incapable of feeling or of displaying vehement, agitating, or soul-stirring emotion; to be in the grip of passion is to be swayed by violent emotion, but without a hint from the context the nature of the emotion remains unknown

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Knipe also knew that passion was powerful, heady stuff, and must be prudently dispensed— Dahl

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Passion (see also FEELING, DESIRE) may specifically designate intense erotic love, or often lust, or it may designate violent rage

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she flew into a passion

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I am very sorry, good Horatio, that to Laertes I forgot myself . . . but, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me into a towering passion—Shak.

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Fervor and ardor both imply the kindling of emotion to a high degree of heat, but fervor more often suggests a steady glow or burning and ardor a restless or leaping flame. Fervor is associated especially with matters (as emotions that express themselves in prayer, contemplation, or devotion) involving persistent warmth; ardor, with those (as emotions that express themselves in eager longings, or zealous efforts) that suggest the violence and sometimes the transitoriness or wavering of flames

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the fervor of a nun

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the ardor of a missionary

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exhort with fervor

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dampened his ardor

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all prayed and hunted quail with equal fervor and died ... at an advanced age— Styron

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in the prints of Harunobu there is an intense sympathy with youth, with its shyness, its tremulous ardors— Binyon

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Enthusiasm often comes very close to ardor, but it may differ in its emphasis on the rational grounds for the emotion, such as thoroughgoing admiration for a person or thing or conviction of the worthiness of a cause or end. Ardor may suggest aspiration without a clearly envisioned goal, but enthusiasm nearly always implies an objective, a cause, or an object of devotion; thus, a teacher may stimulate ardor in a pupil without necessarily directing the latter's emotion into a definite channel, but he stimulates enthusiasm only when he provides the pupil with something concrete to admire, to follow, or to fight for

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he showed in this cause not only the enthusiasm of an idealist, but the sagacity of a practical leader— Inge

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they are both weary of politics today, still radicals out of habit, but without enthusiasm and without a cause— Mailer

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Zeal retains from earlier senses a suggestion of a goading or driving passion expressed as great ardor or enthusiasm for a cause or end and coupled with energetic and unflagging activity in the service of the cause or in the pursuit of the end

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with all the zeal which young and fiery converts feel— Byron

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it took the Franciscan movement about twenty years to lose the passion of its early zeal— Huxley

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worked in almost silent zeal and entire absorption— Buck

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Analogous words: *ecstasy, rapture, transport: *anger, rage, fury, wrath: eroticism, amorousness (see corresponding adjectives at EROTIC)