ardency

Noun

1. The quality of being ardent.
   • So is their ioyes with fearefull passions mixt, Which doth encrease the ardencie of loue, On the forbidden thinges our eyes are fixt; - 1597, Robert Parry, Sinetes Passions uppon his Fortunes, London: William Holme,...
   • The Ardency of my Passion made me incapable of uttering more; - 1709, Richard Steele, “The Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff Esq.”, in The Tatler, volume 1, number 33, London: John Nutt, published 1712, page 242:
   • […] 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. - 1818, John Keats, Endymion, London: Taylor and...

   Synonyms: passion

   1. Intensity of feelings.

   2. Intensity of devotion.

      • 1548, Hugh Latimer, sermon preached on 22 March, 1548 in 27 Sermons, London: John Day, 1562, p. 46, 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. , This, as we have earnestly desired in our former Letters, so now again with the...
      • 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...

      Synonyms: eagerness zeal

   3. Intensity of heat or burning.

      • 1596, Francis Sabie, “David and Beersheba” Adams Complaint, London: Richard Johnes, Field-tilling Swains driue home their toiling teams, Out-wearied with ardencie of heat:
      • 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; - 1752, John Williams, Parker Bennet, Essays on the...
      • […] the ardency of the sun grew greater, and the Hermit’s cliff was a fiery furnace. - 1908, Edith Wharton, “The Hermit and the Wild Woman”, in The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories, New York: Scribner, page...

      Synonyms: ferocity fierceness fieriness fury vehemence

   4. Intensity of light.

      • 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; - 1891, William Clark Russell, chapter...
      • 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. - 1914,...

      Synonyms: brightness brilliance dazzle luminosity lustre radiance