ARDOUR

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does ardour mean? 

• ARDOUR (noun)
  The noun ARDOUR has 3 senses:

1. a feeling of strong eagerness (usually in favor of a person or cause)

2. intense feeling of love

3. feelings of great warmth and intensity

  Familiarity information: ARDOUR used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ARDOUR (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A feeling of strong eagerness (usually in favor of a person or cause)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

ardor; ardour; elan; zeal

Context example:

he felt a kind of religious zeal

Hypernyms ("ardour" is a kind of...):

avidity; avidness; eagerness; keenness (a positive feeling of wanting to push ahead with something)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Intense feeling of love

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

ardor; ardour

Hypernyms ("ardour" is a kind of...):

love (a strong positive emotion of regard and affection)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Feelings of great warmth and intensity

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

ardor; ardour; fervency; fervidness; fervor; fervour; fire

Context example:

he spoke with great ardor

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)

 Context examples 

Elizabeth was of a calmer and more concentrated disposition; but, with all my ardour, I was capable of a more intense application and was more deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

To have a full stomach, to doze lazily in the sunshine—such things were remuneration in full for his ardours and toils, while his ardours and tolls were in themselves self-remunerative.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Don't cling so tenaciously to ties of the flesh; save your constancy and ardour for an adequate cause; forbear to waste them on trite transient objects.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

You can see, young gentleman, that not a scrap of the ardour with which I serve my country has been shot away.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It damped my new-born ardour, to find that ardour so difficult of communication to her.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Mrs. Norris, however, had gone home and taken down two old prayer-books of her husband with that idea; but, upon examination, the ardour of generosity went off.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

His genius and ardour had seemed to foresee and to command his prosperous path.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

"Add to which," cried Marianne, "that he has neither genius, taste, nor spirit. That his understanding has no brilliancy, his feelings no ardour, and his voice no expression."

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Why he had done it, what could have provoked him to such a breach of hospitality, and so suddenly turned all his partial regard for their daughter into actual ill will, was a matter which they were at least as far from divining as Catherine herself; but it did not oppress them by any means so long; and, after a due course of useless conjecture, that it was a strange business, and that he must be a very strange man, grew enough for all their indignation and wonder; though Sarah indeed still indulged in the sweets of incomprehensibility, exclaiming and conjecturing with youthful ardour.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

The old house with its atmosphere of murder, the singular and formidable inhabitants, the unknown dangers of the approach, and the fact that we were putting ourselves legally in a false position all combined to damp my ardour.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)