different between impassioned vs perfervid

English

Alternative forms

• empassioned [16th-18th c.]

Etymology

From impassion +? -ed.

Adjective

impassioned (comparative more impassioned, superlative most impassioned)

1. Filled with intense emotion or passion; fervent.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.9:

     She was empassioned at that piteous act, / With zealous envy of the Greekes cruell fact / Against that nation […]

   • 1839, Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, VI:

     The tears fell fast from the maiden's eyes as she closed her impassioned appeal, and hid her face in the bosom of her sister.

Translations

English

Etymology

From Late Latin perfervidus, from Latin per- + fervidus. Surface analysis per- +? fervid; compare pellucid.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /p???f??v?d/

Adjective

perfervid (comparative more perfervid, superlative most perfervid)

1. Extremely, excessively, or feverishly passionate; zealous.
   • 1939, Philip George Chadwick, The Death Guard, page 58:

     Manders — perfervid — 'hell'-ing excitedly (was there no one left on earth to convert but me?), quoting over a century from Marx and Nietzsche to Lenin, Lloyd George, and Eden, and on to Vessant and Mundaine and himself...

   • 1974, Lawrence Durrell, Monsieur, Faber & Faber 1992, p. 177:

     In this case he saw himself sitting beside the breathing slender figure of Pia like someone in an old engraving – a beastly old Rembrandt exhaling the perfervid gloom of Protestantism and a diet of turnips.

   • 1989, Nick Cave, And the Ass Saw the Angel:

     Ah threw mahself down the porch steps and fell to mah knees in the middle of the yard, wringing mah hands and beating at the sky and wailing and reeling in the red dust and petitioning the almighty with perfervid prayer.

   • 2002, Joseph O'Conner, Star of the Sea, Vintage 2003, p. 6:

     A clown, Grantley Dixon, a perfervid parrot, with his militant slogans and second-hand attitudes: like all coffee-house radicals a screaming snob at heart.

Synonyms

• fervid, eager, ardent, enthusiastic

Related terms

• fervid, pellucid

References

• Douglas Harper (2001–2021) , “perfervid”, in Online Etymology Dictionary