vehemency

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ve·he·ment

(vē′ə-mənt)

adj.

Characterized by forcefulness of expression or intensity of emotion or conviction; fervid: a vehement denial.

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin vehemēns, vehement-, perhaps from vehere, to carry; see wegh- in Indo-European roots.]

ve′he·mence, ve′he·men·cy n.

ve′he·ment·ly adv.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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vehemency

noun

Exceptionally great concentration, power, or force, especially in activity:

depth (often used in plural), ferociousness, ferocity, fierceness, fury, intensity, pitch, severity, vehemence, violence.

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References in periodicals archive ?

(25) In a ten-page etymological meditation on apprehendit in these verses (part of a 1605 Christmas sermon preached before James I), Andrewes reads the word as "laying fast hold, and seizing surely," and as "to seize upon with great vehemency, to lay hold on with both hands." (26) As Deborah Shuger has written of Andrewes's reading, this "full, waking, and forcible word [apprehendit] ...

"How like a god": Shakespeare and Early Modern Apprehension

is by the vehemency of our voice and utterance to expresse the greatnesse of our affections and passions, and thereby to move the like affections in our hearers' (K3v, K4r).

Henry Peacham's Affective Rhetoric and the Renaissance 'Philosophy of Man' in The Garden of Eloquence (1577, 1593)

According to John Smith in The Mystery of Rhetoric Unveil'd, "Pathopoeia is a form of speech whereby the speaker moves the mind of his hearers to some vehemency of affection, as of love, hatred, gladness, sorrow, &c.