passion
Pluralpassions
Verbpassions, passioning, passioned
Pluralpassions
Formspassions, passioning, passioned
- 1
- 2Fervor and determination; intense enthusiasm directed toward a goal or activity.
Her passion for justice drove her to study law.
The team fought with passion until the final whistle.
Similarenthusiasm, fervor, zeal, ardor
Oppositeindifference, apathy
- 3A genuine desire that is sustained or prolonged over time.
Music remained his lifelong passion.
Gardening became her quiet passion after retirement.
Similarlove, obsession, enthusiasm
- 4
- 5A person who is the object of one's romantic love or strong romantic interest.
For years she remained his secret passion.
He spoke of her as the great passion of his youth.
Similarlove, infatuation
Note
Here the word names the thing loved rather than the feeling: a passion, someone's passion. The object need not be a person. A motorbike collection can grow from a hobby into a passion, so context decides whether the reading is romantic. Compare the lasting desire, which is the wanting itself. This sense is what the wanting is aimed at.
- 6The suffering of Jesus in the period leading up to and during his crucifixion.
The priest preached on the Passion during Holy Week.
Medieval art often depicted the Passion in vivid detail.
Note
Here the word keeps closest to its Latin root: passio, from patior, "to suffer," which entered English as early as Old English. With a capital and the definite article, the Passion names one particular suffering, as in sermons on the Passion or scenes of the Passion. Lowercase, the same idea widens into suffering or distress in general, while a play or musical retelling commemorates this one.
- 7A musical composition, play, or display created to commemorate the suffering of Jesus.
Bach's Passion is among the greatest works of sacred music.
The village stages a Passion every spring.
Note
The commemoration takes its name from the event it retells. Unlike the suffering itself, this sense is countable. A village can stage a Passion and a composer can write one, so it takes a or a possessive (Bach's Passion). The capital usually carries over from the religious sense, and that helps tell the work apart from an ordinary enthusiasm.
- 8To give a passionate character to something.
Skilled poets passion their verses with vivid imagery.
The composer passioned the melody with sweeping strings.
Similarimpassion
Note
The transitive partner of the obsolete "suffer" verb: here someone passions something, giving it feeling, as a composer passions a melody. It inflects regularly as passions, passioning, passioned. Impassion is the more familiar synonym and usually the safer choice. Many readers will find passion used as a transitive verb unusual.
- 9The enduring of imposed or inflicted pain; broadly, any suffering or distress.
Note
An older, wider meaning that modern English has largely let go: any suffering, especially pain borne from outside. The phrase a cardiac passion shows how plainly it once named bodily distress, here a complaint of the heart. Today the suffering meaning survives mainly in the Passion of Jesus. Expect it in older texts, and avoid it in your own writing.
- 10A disorder of the mind; madness.
The fit is momentary, vpon a thought / He will againe be well. If much you note him / You ſhall offend him, and extend his Paſſion, / Feed, and regard him not.
c. 1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”Note
Shakespeare's Macbeth (c. 1606) shows the sense at work. Macbeth's fit, the speaker warns, will only be extended if he is watched closely. His passion is a seizure of the mind, not a feeling. Modern readers easily take it as strong emotion. In older texts, check whether a fit, a delusion or a loss of reason is meant.
- 11A quality, property, or characteristic that belongs to something by its very nature.
Note
Older mathematics and philosophy used the word for a property a thing has by its nature, as when one seeks "some passion of the circle." Read it as property or attribute. It sits close to Bacon's passions of matter, but those are capacities for being affected. Here the quality simply belongs to the thing, the way its features belong to a circle.
- 12The condition of being passive, that is, of being acted on or affected by some outside agent or influence.
Oppositeaction
Note
A philosopher's term, the mirror image of action. John Locke, in An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding (1689), says that a body set in motion undergoes a passion rather than performs an action. That pairing is the key to such texts: action is doing, and passion is being done to. In older philosophy it has nothing to do with feeling and should never be read as enthusiasm.
- 13The capacity of being affected by external agents; susceptibility to impressions from outside.
Note
Where being acted upon names the event, this sense names the capacity for it. In 1631 Francis Bacon lists the "passions of matter": impressible or not, mouldable or not, scissile or not. He means the ways a substance can or cannot take an impression. It appears in the plural in such lists and belongs wholly to older natural philosophy.
- 14To suffer pain or sorrow; to experience strong emotion or be extremely agitated.
Dumbly she passions, frantically she doteth.
1593, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonisshe passioned To see herself escap'd from so sore ills
1820, John Keats, LamiaSimilarsuffer, ache, grieve, hurt, agonize
Note
An intransitive verb, used without an object: she passions, I passion to say. Shakespeare uses it in Venus and Adonis (1593) with "Dumbly she passions," and Keats takes it up again in 1820 with "she passioned / To see herself escap'd." Poets, in other words, kept reaching for it long after ordinary speech had settled on ache and grieve.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of passion apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
From Middle English "passioun," from Old French "passion" (and partly from Old English "passion"), from Latin "passio" ("suffering"), a noun formed from the verb "patior" ("I suffer"), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *peh₁- ("to hurt").