Sunday, 6 September 2009

A quick musing.

The word zeal (noun) means a fervently held belief. A zealot (noun) is someone who believes in a particular cause vehemently. The adjectival - as well as adverbial - form of the noun zeal is zealous: a zealous person. The adverbial form of the word zeal is zealously, as in: he believes in it zealously. But we also have the adjective/adverb overzealous, which means believing in something in an excessive way. My question is, how can someone be overzealous? To be overzealous must mean to be more than zealous. Surely that's physically impossible? (In another way, overzealous could mean unnecessarily zealous - again showing the warped nature of the 21st century mind.) If you're gonna accept that word, I'm gonna start speaking of people as being megazealous. That's my word now! (God forbid kids should start saying uberzealous!)

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