different between passionate vs perfervid

English

Etymology

From Middle English passionat, from Medieval Latin passionatus, past participle of passionare (“to be affected with passion”); see passion.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?pæ??n?t/, /?pæ??n?t/
• Hyphenation: pas?sion?ate

Adjective

passionate (comparative more passionate, superlative most passionate)

1. Given to strong feeling, sometimes romantic, sexual, or both.
2. Fired with intense feeling.
   • 1718, Matthew Prior, Solomon, and other Poems on several Occasions, Preface, in Samuel Johnson (editor), The Works of the English Poets, London: J. Nichols, Volume 31, 1779, p. 93,^[1]

     Homer intended to shew us, in his Iliad, that dissentions amongst great men obstruct the execution of the noblest enterprizes […] His Achilles therefore is haughty and passionate, impatient of any restraint by laws, and arrogant of arms.

3. (obsolete) Suffering; sorrowful.
   • 1596, William Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King John, II. i. 544:

     She is sad and passionate at your highness’ tent.

   • 1599, William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, I. ii. 124:

     Poor, forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus,

Synonyms

• (fired with intense feeling): ardent, blazing, burning, dithyrambic, fervent, fervid, fiery, flaming, glowing, heated, hot-blooded, hotheaded, impassioned, perfervid, red-hot, scorching, torrid

Derived terms

• passionate friendship

Related terms

• passion
• passive
• passivity
• patience
• patient

Translations

Noun

passionate (plural passionates)

1. A passionate individual.

Verb

passionate (third-person singular simple present passionates, present participle passionating, simple past and past participle passionated)

1. (obsolete) To fill with passion, or with another given emotion.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I.xii:

     Great pleasure mixt with pittifull regard, / That godly King and Queene did passionate [...].

2. (obsolete) To express with great emotion.
   • 1607, William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus, III. ii. 6:

     Thy niece and I, poor creatures, want our hands / And cannot passionate our tenfold grief / with folded arms.

Further reading

• passionate in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• passionate in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Latin

Adjective

passi?n?te

1. vocative masculine singular of passi?n?tus

References

• passionate in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)

Middle English

Adjective

passionate

1. Alternative form of passionat

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