fervid

<font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica"> <p> <strong> <font color="#000066">Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 28, 2023 is:</font> </strong> </p> <p> <strong>fervid</strong> &#149; \FER-vid\&nbsp; &#149; <em>adjective</em><br /> <p><em>Fervid</em> is a somewhat formal word describing people or things that express, or are expressive of, strong feelings.</p> <p>// Many of the movie franchise’s most <em>fervid</em> fans camped outside of theaters for days leading up to the new installment’s opening night.</p> <p><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fervid">See the entry ></a></p> </p> <p> <strong>Examples:</strong><br /> <p>“Unabashed pop groups with <em>fervid</em> teenage followings tend to get trivialized, at least in the media. They’re dismissed as being slick and calculated and superficial. But there’s a story in ‘Wham!,’ the new Netflix documentary about the quintessential pop duo of the 1980s, that testifies to what a chancy and audacious artist George Michael was even back in his teen-idol days.” — Owen Gleiberman, <em>Variety</em>, 8 July 2023 </p> </p> <p> <strong>Did you know?</strong><br /> <p>If you’ve ever felt as if your emotions were going to boil over, whether you were overly <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bubbly">bubbly</a> or, less happily, you needed to simmer down over something, you should have no trouble understanding the roots of <em>fervid</em>. <em>Fervid</em> comes from the Latin verb <em>fervēre</em>, meaning “to boil” or “to glow,” as well as, by extension, “to seethe” or “to be roused.” In English, this root gave us not only <em>fervid</em> but the similar-sounding and practically synonymous word <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fervent"><em>fervent</em></a>. But while <em>fervid</em> usually suggests warm emotion that is expressed in a spontaneous or feverish manner (as in “fervid basketball fans”), <em>fervent</em> is reserved for a kind of emotional warmt