Now rare. [f. FERVENT + -NESS.] The quality of being fervent.
1. Boiling, burning, or glowing heat; = FERVOUR 1.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., X. ix. (1495), 379. Smalle asshes … slakyth … the feruentnes of the cole.
1533. Elyot, Cast. Helthe (1541), 73 a. It [melancholy] may not be so littell, that the bloud and spirites in their ferventnes, be as it were unbridlyd.
1586. Bright, Melanch., xxvii. 153. Although it [water] be hote, yet inferiour in degree to the heate of feruentnes.
1600. F. Walker, Sp. Mandeville, 46 b. Besides the great feruentnes of the hot starres, as if it had beene in the part of a burnt world, they began to want water.
2. Ardour, eagerness, vigour, zeal; also an instance of the same; = FERVOUR 2.
c. 1430. Wyclif, Num. xxv. 11 [MS. S]. Y my silf schulde not do awai the sones of Israel in my greet hete [feruentnesse of veniaunce].
1477. Earl Rivers (Caxton), Dictes, 133. Whyche wil not be wele condyted nor stered for the feruentnesse of the same tempest in the see.
1528. Tindale, Parab. Mammon, Wks. I. 84. Christ here teacheth Simon by the ferventness of love.
1611. Speed, Hist. Gt. Brit., IX. viii. (1632), 581. The Archbishops feruentness in using such eager perswasions.
1631. Mabbe, Celestina, III. 40. Money can doe any thing; it splitteth hard Rocks; it passeth ouer Riuers dry-foote; there is not any place so high, whereunto an Asse laden with gold will not get vp; his vnaduisednesse, and feruentnesse of affection, is sufficient to marre him, and to make vs.
1727. Bailey, vol. II, Ferventness.
