| Learning / English Dictionary |
ARDOUR
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Feelings of great warmth and intensity
Example:
he spoke with great ardor
Synonyms:
ardor; ardour; fervency; fervidness; fervor; fervour; fire
Classified under:
Nouns denoting feelings and emotions
Hypernyms ("ardour" is a kind of...):
passion; passionateness (a strong feeling or emotion)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "ardour"):
zeal (excessive fervor to do something or accomplish some end)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Intense feeling of love
Synonyms:
ardor; ardour
Classified under:
Nouns denoting feelings and emotions
Hypernyms ("ardour" is a kind of...):
love (a strong positive emotion of regard and affection)
Sense 3
Meaning:
A feeling of strong eagerness (usually in favor of a person or cause)
Example:
he felt a kind of religious zeal
Synonyms:
ardor; ardour; elan; zeal
Classified under:
Nouns denoting feelings and emotions
Hypernyms ("ardour" is a kind of...):
avidity; avidness; eagerness; keenness (a positive feeling of wanting to push ahead with something)
Context examples:
I should have felt terrible fear at seeing Jonathan in such danger, but that the ardour of battle must have been upon me as well as the rest of them; I felt no fear, but only a wild, surging desire to do something.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
I read with ardour those works, so full of genius and discrimination, which modern inquirers have written on these subjects.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
“It is ardour that we need in the Service, young gentleman,” said he.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I have observed in books written by men, that period assigned as the farthest to which a husband's ardour extends.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
It would be something to be loved by such a girl, to excite the first ardours of her young unsophisticated mind!
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
But these objections had all, with that happy ardour of youth which Marianne and her mother equally shared, been overcome or overlooked; and Elinor, in spite of every occasional doubt of Willoughby's constancy, could not witness the rapture of delightful expectation which filled the whole soul and beamed in the eyes of Marianne, without feeling how blank was her own prospect, how cheerless her own state of mind in the comparison, and how gladly she would engage in the solicitude of Marianne's situation to have the same animating object in view, the same possibility of hope.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
And Elizabeth, to do her justice, had, in the first ardour of female alarm, set seriously to think what could be done, and had finally proposed these two branches of economy, to cut off some unnecessary charities, and to refrain from new furnishing the drawing-room; to which expedients she afterwards added the happy thought of their taking no present down to Anne, as had been the usual yearly custom.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
She filled my heart with such good resolutions, strengthened my weakness so, by her example, so directed—I know not how, she was too modest and gentle to advise me in many words—the wandering ardour and unsettled purpose within me, that all the little good I have done, and all the harm I have forborne, I solemnly believe I may refer to her.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
It crushed them into the remotest recesses of their own minds, pressing out of them, like juices from the grape, all the false ardours and exaltations and undue self-values of the human soul, until they perceived themselves finite and small, specks and motes, moving with weak cunning and little wisdom amidst the play and inter-play of the great blind elements and forces.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
I have read with ardour the accounts of the various voyages which have been made in the prospect of arriving at the North Pacific Ocean through the seas which surround the pole.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
