n.
- A powerful emotion, such as love, joy, hatred, or anger.
- Ardent love.
- Strong sexual desire; lust.
- The object of such love or desire.
- Boundless enthusiasm: His skills as a player don't quite match his passion for the game.
- The object of such enthusiasm: Soccer is her passion.
- An abandoned display of emotion, especially of anger: He's been known to fly into a passion without warning.
- Passion
- The sufferings of Jesus in the period following the Last Supper and including the Crucifixion, as related in the New Testament.
- A narrative, musical setting, or pictorial representation of Jesus's sufferings.
- Archaic. Martyrdom.
- Archaic. Passivity.
[Middle English, from Old French, from Medieval Latin passiō, passiōn-, sufferings of Jesus or a martyr, from Late Latin, physical suffering, martyrdom, sinful desire, from Latin, an undergoing, from passus, past participle of patī, to suffer.]
SYNONYMS passion, fervor, fire, zeal, ardor. These nouns denote powerful, intense emotion. Passion is a deep, overwhelming emotion: "There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy" (Richard Brinsley Sheridan). The term may signify sexual desire or anger: "He flew into a violent passion and abused me mercilessly" (H.G. Wells). Fervor is great warmth and intensity of feeling: "The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal" (William James). Fire is burning passion: "In our youth our hearts were touched with fire" (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.). Zeal is strong, enthusiastic devotion to a cause, ideal, or goal and tireless diligence in its furtherance: "Laurie [resolved], with a glow of philanthropic zeal, to found and endow an institution for ... women with artistic tendencies" (Louisa May Alcott). Ardor is fiery intensity of feeling: "the furious ardor of my zeal repressed" (Charles Churchill). See also synonyms at feeling.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
