different between zeal vs ardency

English

Etymology

From Middle English zele, from Old French zel, from Late Latin z?lus, from Ancient Greek ????? (zêlos, “zeal, jealousy”), from Proto-Indo-European *yeh?- (“to search”). Related to jealous.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /zi?l/
• (US) IPA^(key): /zil/
• Rhymes: -i?l

Noun

zeal (countable and uncountable, plural zeals)

1. The fervour or tireless devotion for a person, cause, or ideal and determination in its furtherance; diligent enthusiasm; powerful interest.

   Synonyms: ardour, eagerness, enthusiasm, intensity, passion

   Antonym: apathy

   • 1611, King James Version of the Bible, Romans 10.2,^[1]

     […] I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.

   • 1687, John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther, London: Jacob Tonson, Part 3, p. 96,^[2]

     Zeal, the blind conductor of the will

   • 1779, David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part 12, pp. 143-144,^[3]

     […] the highest zeal in religion and the deepest hypocrisy, so far from being inconsistent, are often or commonly united in the same individual character.

   • 1815, Jane Austen, Emma, London: John Murray, Volume 1, Chapter 14, p. 250,^[4]

     [He] would begin admiring her drawings with so much zeal and so little knowledge as seemed terribly like a would-be lover,

   • 1962, Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Chapter 15, p. 248,^[5]

     The stockman’s zeal for eliminating the coyote has resulted in plagues of field mice, which the coyote formerly controlled.

2. (obsolete) A person who exhibits such fervour or tireless devotion.

   Synonym: zealot

   • 1614, Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, London: Robert Allot, Act V, Scene 5, p. 85,^[6]

     […] like a malicious purblinde zeale as thou art!

   • 1642, Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, London: Andrew Crooke, p. 5,^[7]

     […] there are questionlesse both in Greeke, Roman and Africa Churches, solemnities, and ceremonies, whereof the wiser zeales doe make a Christian use, and stand condemned by us;

3. The collective noun for a group of zebras.

   Synonyms: dazzle, herd

Related terms

Translations

Anagrams

• Elza, laze, zale

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