Word Finder - zeal

definition

The fervour or tireless devotion for a person, cause, or ideal and determination in its furtherance; diligent enthusiasm; powerful interest.

example

She extols the virtues of veganism with missionary zeal.

synonyms

• ardour
• eagerness
• enthusiasm
• intensity
• passion

definition

A person who exhibits such fervour or tireless devotion.

synonyms

• zealot

definition

The collective noun for a group of zebras.

synonyms

• dazzle
• herd

His zeal and energy met everywhere with conspicuous success.

His zeal is represented in a twofold aspect.

In this process some of the local officials displayed probably an amount of zeal beyond the intentions of the government, but any attempt to oppose the movement was rigorously punished.

Malichus also, the murderer or reputed murderer of Antipater, appears to have been a partisan of Hyrcanus, who had a zeal for Judaism.

A great and widespread revival marked the opening years of the century, resulting in marvellous increase of zeal and numbers.

With the zeal of new converts they set forth on their new errand very much in the spirit of their heathen forefathers.

In later years he threw himself with zeal into politics.

When the insurrectionary movements of 1848 broke out in Italy, his known zeal for the cause of legitimacy, as much as his reputation as an officer, marked him out for command.

We have the zeal, we know the Cross.

No mystic ever worked with warmer zeal than Mill.

Pastor Frecht of Nuremberg pursued him with bitter zeal.

At the early age of twenty-two he gave his first lecture as professor of mathematics in the college which he served with the utmost zeal and success for a third of a century.

Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.

The zeal of thy house (says he) hath eaten me up.

Although thoroughly devoted to the ideals of monasticism, he discharged his episcopal duties with remarkable zeal and fidelity.

But through all situations of his life he preserved his equanimity, his keen interest in science, and his indefatigable zeal for the instruction of others.

This was in 1761, and the argument inspired him with zeal for the cause of the American colonies.

The officials were not slow to take the hint, and their undue zeal at once disappeared.

His indignation was aroused by the barbarities inflicted upon the Hottentots and Kaffirs (by a minority of the colonists), and he set himself to remedy their grievances; but his zeal was greater than his knowledge.

His organizing genius, even more than his missionary zeal, left its mark upon the German church throughout all the middle ages.

In the domestic affairs of England the archbishop showed more spiritual zeal.

The study of Arabic was taken up by lexicographers, grammarians and poets (mostly of foreign origin) with a zeal rarely shown elsewhere.

In Persia their numbers and their zeal stimulated the old churches into vigour and led to the founding of new ones.

They showed a zeal for evangelization which resulted in the establishment of their influence throughout Asia, as is seen from the bishoprics founded not only in Syria, Armenia, Arabia and Persia, but at Halavan in Media, Mer y in Khorasan, Herat, Tashkent, Samarkand, Baluk, Kashgar, and even at Kambaluk (Pekin) and Singan fu Hsi`en fu in China, and Kaljana and Kranganore in India.

Other reinforcements came from Persia in 822, but the Malabar church never developed any intellectual vigour or missionary zeal.

Suspected of "Moderatism" on account of this incident, especially when he was recalled to Paris, Tallien increased, in appearance, his revolutionary zeal, but Therese abated his revolutionary ardour, and from the lives she saved by her entreaties she received the name of "Our Lady of Thermidor," after the 9th of Thermidor.

His son Frederick was the author of Sermons on Several Important Subjects and Sermons on Christian Zeal, both published in 1753.

Discouraged by this failure in the pulpit, Savonarola now devoted himself to teaching in the convent, but his zeal for the salvation of the apathetic townsfolk was soon to stir him to fresh efforts.

There he continued to preach with unabated zeal; and, since the women of Florence deplored the loss of his teachings, one day in the week was set apart for them.

Public indignation was aroused by what were known as the "Bulgarian atrocities," and Gladstone flung himself into the agitation against Turkey with characteristic zeal.

But the Christianization of the inland Pontic districts began only about the middle of the 3rd century and was largely due to the missionary zeal of Gregory Thaumaturgus, bishop of Neocaesarea.

His episcopate, which lasted some thirty years, was characterized by great missionary zeal, and by so much success that, according to the (doubtless somewhat rhetorical) statement of Gregory of Nyssa, whereas at the outset of his labours there were only seventeen Christians in the city, there were at his death only seventeen persons in all who had not embraced Christianity.

Of the excellence of his style and of his practical religious zeal we are able to judge from the thirteen homilies on the Christian life and character which have been edited and translated by Budge (London, 1894).

The magnitude of the sum, and his acquiescence in the grant of pensions by the Shelburne ministry, convinced the country that his zeal for economy was hypocritical.

His favourite authors were Euripides, Virgil and Racine, whom he defends against the stock criticisms of the admirers of Corneille with equal zeal and insight.

In his zeal for orthodoxy, indeed, Frederick William outstripped his minister; he even blamed W6llner's "idleness and vanity" for the inevitable failure of the attempt to regulate opinion from above, and in 1794 deprived him of one of his secular offices in order that he might have more time "to devote himself to the things of God"; in edict after edict the king continued to the end of his reign to make regulations "in order to maintain in his states a true and active Christianity, as the path to genuine fear of God."

It shared to the full in all the quickening that transformed so many departments of civilization during that epoch, and has been specially influenced by the missionary enterprise, the discoveries of science, the fuller knowledge of the Bible, the awakened zeal for social service.

But his example and his zeal profoundly influenced for good the Irish poor forming the majority of his flock; and the "League of the Cross" which he founded, and which held annual demonstrations at the Crystal Palace, numbered nearly 30,000 members in London alone in 1874.

But within a somewhat narrower field he worked with patience, industry, and self-denying zeal; his ambition, which seemed to many personal, was rather the outcome of his devotion to the cause of the Church; and in the later years of his life especially he showed that he loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and that he realized as clearly as any one that the service of God was incomplete without the service of man.

His zeal prompted him to undertake an embassy to the king of Ethiopia, in order to stimulate him against the converts whom he had taken under his protection, but he returned a convert to the Mahommedan faith and joined the fugitive prophet at Medina.

On a visit home he converted his mother, but his zeal against the Arians roused persecution against him and for some time he lived an ascetic life on the desert island of Gallinaria near Genoa.

In contrast to the majority of Italian cardinals of his day, Cajetan was a man of austere piety and fervent zeal; and if, from the standpoint of the Dominican idea of the supreme necessity of maintaining ecclesiastical discipline, he defended the extremist claims of the papacy, he also proclaimed that the pope should be "the mirror of God on earth."

He was still felt by many of his clergy and by candidates for ordination to be a rather terrifying person, and to enforce almost impossible standards of diligence, accuracy and preaching efficiency, but his manifest devotion to his work and his zeal for the good of the people rooted him deeply in the general confidence.

The earliest zeal has passed away and heathen ways of thought and life are tolerated and practised at Pergamum and Ephesus, and faith is dying or dead at Laodicea and Sardis.

Abu-Bekr's zeal for the spread of the new faith was as conspicuous as that of its founder had been.

She had only one virtue, and that was her zeal for the interests of her children, especially of her favourite third son, the duke of Anjou.

But in the 4th century this puritanic zeal gave way; and this and other pagan feasts were taken over by the Church; a century earlier in Asia Minor Gregory the Thaumaturge was actively transforming into shrines and cult of martyrs the temples and idolatrous rites of heroes and demigods.

In January 1762 Bute was compelled to declare war against Spain, though now without the advantages which the earlier decision urged by Pitt could have secured, and he supported the war, but with no zeal and no definite aim beyond the obtaining of a peace at any price and as soon as possible.

Poland, after a defection of years, was ultimately recovered for the papacy by the zeal and devotion of the Jesuit missionaries.

The counterrevolution was chiefly the outcome of religious zeal played upon by the Mahommedan Union.