ardor

American  

[ahr-der] / ˈɑr dər /

especially British, ardour

noun

• ardors
  plural

1. 

   great warmth of feeling; fervor; passion.

   She spoke persuasively and with ardor.

   Synonyms:

   intensity, earnestness, spirit, fervency

2. intense devotion, eagerness, or enthusiasm; zeal.

   his well-known ardor for Chinese art.

3. burning heat.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• ardors
  plural

Etymology

Origin of ardor

1350–1400; Middle English < Latin, equivalent to ārd ( ēre ) to burn + -or -or ¹; replacing Middle English ardure < Old French ardur < Latin, as above; 17th century ardour < Anglo-French < Latin, as above

Explanation

Are you inspired to write love poems to your crush? Sprinkle rose petals in her path? Then you're feeling ardor — an intense kind of warmth and fervor most often associated with love. The Brits spell ardor with an extra vowel, so you'll often see this word written as ardour. But on either side of the pond it's a noun that brings to mind Pepe Le Pew and his fervent pursuit of the female species. But ardor isn't always about love. It's perfectly platonic to be "an ardent supporter" of a certain cause, or show eagerness and ardor in your approach to anything.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

ardor ardors

But Busse brings an American innocence to the role, and her ardor about music and community seems genuine.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 22, 2026

Teenagers everywhere fell under the spell of Rice’s vampires in the mid-‘80s with an ardor that AMC’s “The Vampire Lestat” radiates through the devotion of his superfans.

From Salon ● Jun. 13, 2026

War in the Middle East, the largest energy shock in history and worries about artificial intelligence have done little to cool their ardor.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 23, 2026

Investors could well lose some ardor for Ferrari if it can’t get the electric rollout right.

From Barron's ● Oct. 9, 2025

With that she departed, leaving the young man full of ardor and decision, all his former uncertainty and hesitation gone.

From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton

Neither he nor manager Dave Roberts care to attribute the dip in production to the ardors of catching nearly every game.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2023

Damien Chazelle’s follow-up to “La La Land,” his swooning valentine to the movie musical, more closely resembles the film that preceded it, “Whiplash,” in its visceral attention to the rigors and ardors of achieving greatness.

From New York Times ● Feb. 25, 2019

Domesticity, its ardors and rigors, unspoken binds and compacts, was one of Merrill’s major subjects.

From The New Yorker ● Apr. 6, 2015

I also insist that to a billion contemporary Chinese, Mao Tse-tung has a lot more to answer for than the merry chaos and inscrutable epigrams this opera uses to recall his reckless ardors.

From New York Times ● Feb. 11, 2011

All her various ardors had not slipped away from her without leaving on her countenance the marks of their transmutation, a peculiar nobility that owed half its fineness to unacknowledged suffering.

From Sacrifice by Stephen French Whitman

Related Words

• eagerness
• earnestness
• fervor
• intensity
• passion
• warmth
• zeal