fervency
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of fervency
1375–1425; late Middle English < Late Latin ferventia ( see fervent, -ency); replacing fervence < Middle French < Latin ferventia
Explanation
Fervency is an intense, passionate feeling. Your fervency for your favorite football team is clear from the way you jump around and yell as you watch their games on TV. When you intensely adore someone, you love them with a kind of fervency. Other fierce emotions, especially warm, positive feelings, can also be called fervency, like your fervency for rescue dogs or the fervency of a preacher's Sunday sermon. The Latin root of this word means "to boil" or "to glow," so when you experience an emotion so passionate that you feel like you're glowing — that's fervency.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Audiences are constantly looking to see the wealthy get their butts handed to them, and the fervency of that desire has only grown as the disparity between economic classes has widened.
From Salon • Apr. 4, 2025
Scores of university students on Wednesday marched to the parliamentary chambers in the capital, Kampala, to thank lawmakers for enacting the bill, underscoring the fervency of the bill’s supporters.
From Washington Times • Jun. 3, 2023
“DragCon presents an outlet and an avenue to safely, fully, and authentically express oneself, I say that with such fervency, because I myself was that person who needed that space.”
From Los Angeles Times • May 12, 2023
The ending of the Agnus Dei unfurls a chain of lush harmonic suspensions, underlining the fervency of the plea for peace by one who had seen his share of ecumenical conflict.
From New York Times • Jan. 26, 2023
Zinzendorf's greatness lay in the fervency of his love of the Saviour, and in the yearning desire to gather under the shadow of the cross all who loved the Lord.
From Church History, Vol. 3 of 3 by Kurtz, J. H.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
