Passion from Ardent to Zealous

This post actually began last week, when I covered vehement and coined the name of a scale to measure intensity of feeling: Pvaziff.

In my reading came upon the word fervid, which made me wonder, what’s the difference between fervid, ardent, and fervent?

Fervid means heated or vehement in spirit or enthusiasm, but it can also mean burning, glowing or intensely hot. Fervent means having or showing a great warmth or intensity of spirit or enthusiasm, and also means hot, burning, or glowing (as opposed to burning, glowing, or intensely hot).  Ardent means having, expressive of, or characterized by intense feeling, passionate. It also can mean burning, fiery, or hot (but apparently not glowing).  Zealous means ardently active or devoted.

The definitions aren’t much help. Let’s see if the etymologies can clarify at all. Let’s take them in chronological order.

Ardent came to English in the early 1300s from the Old French word ardant. The word was originally used of alcohols that were distilled, since they were formed by being put over a fire. It came to Old French from Latin, where the word ardentum meant “glowing, fiery, hot, or ablaze.” Ardent spirits were called that because they were flammable (or inflammable, if you prefer – the words mean the same thing, and flammable came first, but with the development of the word “inflame” it wasn’t long before both were used and confusion ensued).

It did not take too much ardent spirits (like brandy) to inflame a burning love for the wench who served it to you, or too long (the late 1300s) for that sense to come into use.

Fervent arrived in English in the middle 1300s an Old French word: fervent. (Go figure!) The Old French got the word from the Latin word ferventum, which is the present participle of fervere, which means to boil or glow. By 1400 it had come to refer not only to physical objects but also to feelings and emotions.

Zealous is a form of the word zeal, developed in the 1520s. The word zeal had been used in English since the late 1300s and came from the Late Latin word zelus. The Greek word zelos means ardor or jealousy, and is of uncertain origin.

Fervid came to English in the 1590s from the Latin word fervidus, which means “glowing, burning, vehement, fervid.” Fervidus also came from fervere. As with fervent, it took a few years (this time about 60 of them) for the word fervid to describe feelings.

In 1830 the word perfervid came into use. The prefix per- is an intensive meaning “completely”, so perfervid would be beyond the v end of the scale. There is no Latin word perfervidus, so the creation is a quasi-Latin word. There is neither a word perfervent nor a word perardent.

Ardent now has a sense of strong attachment rather than the kind of heat generated from fervent or fervid.  Zealous is a stronger word than ardent, and since the definition of fervent contains the word “great” in it, I would put it slightly beyond fervent on the pvaziff scale, while impassioned fits between ardent and zealous.

So, on the pvaziff scale it would be ardent, impassioned, zealous, fervent, fervid, perfervid. But aizffp sounds like something fizzling, so I’m sticking with the pvaziff construction. It may come in handy in Words with Friends.