Fervently

adv. [f. FERVENT a. + -LY.] In a fervent manner.

  † 1.  Burningly, intensely, severely. Obs.

1480.  Caxton, Chron. Eng., ccxliii. 293. God visited hym so sone after with infirmites and grete sikenesse that he myght not wel endure no whyle so feruently he was take.

1561.  Hollybush, Hom. Apoth., 27 a. He that hath the iaundis so feruently and sore that he can nether tayste nor drinke wyne or good drinke.

1627.  Hakewill, Apol., II. vii. § 1. 110. It continued so feruently hot that men rosted egges in the sand.

  2.  With warmth of feeling; ardently, earnestly, hotly, passionately. Now rare exc. in expressions of love, desire, prayer, etc.

c. 1374.  Chaucer, Troylus, IV. 1356.

1494.  Fabyan, Chron., V. cxiii. 86. Chilperich heryng of the scofiture of his people and takynge of his sone, was agayn his brother more feruently amouyd.

1568.  Grafton, Chron., II. 27. The king … pursued them more fervently then circumspectly.

1611.  Bible, Col. iv. 12. Alwaies labouring feruently for you in praiers.

1749.  Fielding, Tom Jones, XVI. ix. She [Mrs. Fitzpatrick] then renewed her proposal, and very fervently recommended it, omitting no argument which her invention could suggest on the subject.

1794.  Sullivan, View Nat., I. 11–2. Most fervently do I love my God, my king, my country, my parents, my friends, my wife, my children, and myself.

1825.  T. Jefferson, Autobiog., Wks. 1859, I. 83. I had fervently pressed the Treasury board to replenish this particular deposit.

1848.  C. Brontë, J. Eyre (1873), 3. I wished fervently he might not discover my hiding-place.

1874.  Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England (1875), III. xviii. 31. Henry again was fervently orthodox, all the more so perhaps for the dislike that as an honest man he must have felt at his father’s intrigues with the Wycliffites.