Forms: 5 fourour, fureur, 5–6 furour(e, 6– furor. [originally a. F. fureur, ad. L. furōr-em, n. of state f. furĕre to rage, be mad. Now only as an occasional use of the Lat. word.]
1. Fury, rage, madness, anger, mania.
c. 1477. Caxton, Jason, 22 b. Considerest thou not the strengthe & force of my body and the furour of my swerde. Ibid. (1489), Faytes of A., III. xxi. 219. A madde man duryng his fourour may not be reputed nor taken for enemye.
1509. Barclay, Shyp of Folys (1570), 70. Where … wrath doth reigne with his furours.
1525. Ld. Berners, Froiss., II. xlvii. 162. Some oppressed … with the furoure of the see.
a. 1541. Wyatt, To his unkind love, Poet. Wks. (1861), 46. What rage is this? what furor? of what kind?
1561. T. Norton, Calvin’s Inst., III. 191. Hoping that ye Lord mighte be turned to them, & turned from the furor of hys wrath.
1603. Sir C. Heydon, Jud. Astrol., ii. 85. The furors of Nero.
1758. H. Walpole, Catal. Roy. Authors (1759), II. 122. A Lord, who with … some derangement of his intellects was so unlucky as not to have his furor of the true poetic sort.
1801. Fuseli, in Lect. Paint., iii. (1848), 413. The enthusiastic furor of the God of War.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., II. II. vi. In mixed terror and furor.
1862. Maurice, Mor. & Met. Philos., IV. vi. § 5. 209. The anti-papal furor of the king’s youth.
2. The inspired frenzy of poets and prophets; in weaker sense, a ‘glow,’ excited mood.
1589. Puttenham, Eng. Poesie, I. i. (Arb.), 20. This science in his perfection can not grow, but by some diuine instinct, the Platonicks call it furor.
1757. Foote, Author, I. 13. I am afraid the poetic Furor may have betray’d me into some Indecency.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., I. IV. i. (1872), 102. Rises into furor almost Pythic.
1856. R. A. Vaughan, Mystics (1860), I. 218. Of these two kinds of divining the former is characterized by repose and quiet, the latter is by a fervency and elevation such as the ancients styled furor.
1860. Geo. Eliot, in Life (1885), II. 159. They [the pages] were written in a furor; but I dare say there is not a word different from what it would have been, if I had written them at the slowest pace.
3. Great enthusiasm or excitement, a ‘rage’ or craze which takes every one by storm. (Cf. next.)
1704. Swift, Mech. Operat. Spirit, Misc. (1711), 301. He seldom was without some female Patients among them, for the furor.
1865. Cornh. Mag., XII. July, 100. Like most old churches, Earndale had suffered under the beautifying furor of the eighteenth century: whitewash, a ceiling, large square pews,—one description serves for all.
1868. M. Pattison, Academ. Org., v. 316. If any proof could convince the advocates of intramural residence of the futility of ‘college-discipline,’ such a proof might be found in the mastery which the athletic furor has established over all minds in this place.
