impassionate means filled with passion; impassioned. It carries an Arena rating of 1492, earned across 8 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, impassionate ranks #3 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #1,875 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #2,178 of 17,163 for Funniest Words, #3,585 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words.
impassionate is pronounced /ɪmˈpæʃənət/.
Why “impassionate” is a great word
Impassionate describes something either fervently emotional or, paradoxically, devoid of emotion, containing its own contradiction within a single form. Its etymology traces to Italian *impassionato*, the past participle of *impassionare* ("to fill with passion"), and by surface analysis from English *in-* ("into") + *passion* + *-ate*; it first appeared in English between 1595 and 1605. Unlike "impassioned," which consistently denotes fervor, or "dispassionate," which guarantees cool detachment, "impassionate" stands divided against itself. It can be the white-hot fury in a courtroom orator's closing argument, the tremulous ardor of a handwritten love letter, or, with a turn of the page, the chill, measured cadence of a surgeon explaining a procedure—a single vessel holding both the fire of feeling and the ice of detachment, a testament to language's capacity to harbor profound ambiguity.
Etymology
From Italian impassionato. By surface analysis, in- (“into”) + passion + -ate (adjective-forming suffix).
adj
- Filled with passion; impassioned
- Lacking passion; dispassionatee.g.“Various old ladies in the neighbourhood spoke of him as The Last of the Patriarchs. So grey, so slow, so quiet, so impassionate, so very bumpy in the head, Patriarch was the word for him.” — 1855 December – 1857 June, Charles Dickens, “Patriarchal”, in Little Dorrit, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1857, →OCLC, 1st book (Poverty), page 105:
verb
- to affect powerfully; to arouse the passions ofe.g.“our Saviour Christ was one while deeply impassionated with Sorrow, another while very strongly carried away with Žeal and Anger” — 1662, Henry More, The Defence of the Moral Cabbala:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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