different between devotion vs ardency

English

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Etymology

From Old French devocion, from Latin d?v?ti?, from d?v?tum +? -tio, from the supine of d?vove? (“vow, devote”); equivalent to devote +? -ion.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /d??v????n/
• (US) IPA^(key): /d??vo???n/

Noun

devotion (usually uncountable, plural devotions)

1. (uncountable) The act or state of devoting or being devoted.
2. (uncountable) Feeling of strong or fervent affection; dedication
3. (uncountable) Religious veneration, zeal, or piety.
4. (countable, ecclesiastical) A prayer (often found in the plural)
5. (in the plural, obsolete) Religious offerings; alms.

Translations

Middle French

Noun

devotion f (plural devotions)

1. devotion (quality of being devoted)

English

Noun

ardency (countable and uncountable, plural ardencies)

1. The quality of being ardent.
   1. Intensity of feelings.

      Synonym: passion

      • 1597, Robert Parry, Sinetes Passions uppon his Fortunes, London: William Holme, Sonetto 23,^[1]

        So is their ioyes with fearefull passions mixt,

        Which doth encrease the ardencie of loue,

        On the forbidden thinges our eyes are fixt;

      • 1709, Richard Steele, The Tatler, No. 33, in The Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff Esq., London: John Nutt, 1712, Volume 1, p. 242,^[2]

        The Ardency of my Passion made me incapable of uttering more;

      • 1818, John Keats, Endymion, London: Taylor and Hessey, Book 2, pp. 54-55,^[3]

        […] the silver flow

        Of Hero’s tears, the swoon of Imogen,

        Fair Pastorella in the bandit’s den,

        Are things to brood on with more ardency

        Than the death-day of empires.

      • 1993, Anthony Burgess, A Dead Man in Deptford, London: Vintage, Part 2, pp. 141-142,^[4]

        If there had been in Tom Walsingham’s brain a flame or even a flicker of response to Kit’s poetic ardency or the cunning of his learning, then there would have been other linkings and knottings and the joy of discourse in the cool of after love […]

   2. Intensity of devotion.

      Synonyms: eagerness, zeal

      • 1548, Hugh Latimer, sermon preached on 22 March, 1548 in 27 Sermons, London: John Day, 1562, p. 46,^[5]

        He repayred to God with this prayer, and said nothinge. Yet wyth a great ardency of spirit, he pearsed Gods eares.

      • 1650, John Milton, letter to John IV of Portugal dated 27 April, 1650, in Letters of State Written by Mr. John Milton, London, 1694, p. ,^[6]

        This, as we have earnestly desired in our former Letters, so now again with the greatest ardency and importunity we request of your Majesty.

      • 1912, Robert Louis Stevenson, Records of a Family of Engineers, London: Chatto & Windus, Chapter 2, pp. 68-69,^[7]

        I must try, by excerpts from his diary and correspondence, to convey to the reader some idea of the ardency and thoroughness with which he threw himself into the largest and least of his multifarious engagements in this service.

   3. Intensity of heat or burning.

      Synonyms: ferocity, fierceness, fieriness, fury, vehemence

      • 1596, Francis Sabie, “David and Beersheba” Adams Complaint, London: Richard Johnes,^[8]

        Field-tilling Swains driue home their toiling teams,

        Out-wearied with ardencie of heat:

      • 1752, John Williams and Parker Bennet, Essays on the Bilious Fever, London: T. Waller, p. 24,^[9]

        The use of clysters is so manifest, so obvious (especially during the ardency of the fever) that I have no further occasion to insist on their being serviceable;

      • 1908, Edith Wharton, “The Hermit and the Wild Woman” in The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories, New York: Scribner, p. 35,^[10]

        […] the ardency of the sun grew greater, and the Hermit’s cliff was a fiery furnace.

   4. Intensity of light.

      Synonyms: brightness, brilliance, dazzle, luminosity, lustre, radiance

      • 1891, William Clark Russell, Marooned, London: Macmillan, Volume 2, Chapter 7, p. 224,^[11]

        One could not look a moment, without a weeping of the sight, into the blinding ardency of the western atmosphere, so charged was it with the ceaseless gushing of the crimson glory;

      • 1914, Hudson Stuck, Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled, New York: Scribner, Chapter 3, p. 75,^[12]

        I can shut my eyes now and see that incomparable sunrise; I can see again that vision of mountains filling half the sky with their unimaginable ardency, and I think that this world never presented nobler sight.

Synonyms

• ardour

Anagrams

• dancery