Enthusiasm

🎴

The origin of enthusiasm is Greek enthous ‘possessed by a god, inspired’, from theos ‘god’, which is the root of many words including atheist (mid 16th century), pantheon (Old English), and theology. Until relatively recently enthusiasm, enthusiast,and enthusiastic had stronger and less favourable meanings than they do today. Enthusiasm was originally, in the early 17th century, religious mania or divine inspiration, often involving ‘speaking in tongues’ and wild, uncontrollable behaviour. An enthusiast was a religious fanatic or fundamentalist, or a hypocrite pretending to be one. Over the next hundred years or so the force of enthusiasm and its related words weakened so that they arrived at something like our modern meanings.

热情（神灵附体时的狂热情感）

enthusiasm原本是一个宗教词汇，来自希腊语 enthousiazein，后者源自entheos，由en（in）+theos（god，神）构成，字面意思就是“神灵附体”。因此英语单词 enthusiasm的本意就是“神灵附体、受到神灵的启发”，后来被用来表示“自认为与神有某种特殊联系而产生过度强烈的宗教情感”。二十世纪后，该词的宗教色彩逐渐消失，用来表示“对某事物的特别热衷、热情”。