ardency

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:

        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 Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff Esq.”, in The Tatler‎, volume 1, number 33, London: John Nutt, published 1712, page 242:

        The Ardency of my Passion made me incapable of uttering more;

      • 1818, John Keats, Endymion‎, London: Taylor and Hessey, Book 2, pp. 54-55:

        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:

        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,

        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 greatest ardency and importunity we request of your Majesty.

      • 1912, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 2, in Records of a Family of Engineers‎, London: Chatto & Windus, pages 68–69:

        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,

        Field-tilling Swains driue home their toiling teams,

        Out-wearied with ardencie of heat:

      • 1752, John Williams, Parker Bennet, Essays on the Bilious Fever‎, London: T. Waller, page 24:

        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, page 35:

        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, chapter 7, in Marooned‎, volume 2, London: Macmillan, page 224:

        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, chapter 3, in Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled‎, New York: Scribner, page 75:

        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.

• ardour

• dancery