ardency

Noun

ardency (countable and uncountable, plural ardencies)

1. Intensity of feelings.
   • 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, Sonetto 23
   • 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

   Synonyms:

   passion

2. Intensity of devotion.
   • He repayred to God with this prayer, and said nothinge. Yet wyth a great ardency of spirit, he pearsed Gods eares.1548, Hugh Latimer, sermon preached on 22 March, 1548 in 27 Sermons, London: John Day, 1562, p. 46
   • This, as we have earnestly desired in our former Letters, so now again with the greatest ardency and importunity we request of your Majesty.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.

   Synonyms:

   eagerness, zeal

3. Intensity of heat or burning.
   • Field-tilling Swains driue home their toiling teams,
     Out-wearied with ardencie of heat:1596, Francis Sabie, “David and Beersheba” Adams Complaint, London: Richard Johnes
   • 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 Bilious Fever, London: T. Waller, page 24

   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 7, in Marooned, volume 2, London: Macmillan, page 224
   • 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, Hudson Stuck, chapter 3, in Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled, New York: Scribner, page 75

   Synonyms:

   brightness, brilliance, dazzle, luminosity, lustre, radiance