Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a relatively obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar, another brick to add to the wall of your vocabulary. This week's word:
ZEAL
St. Paul was fond of the word zeal (pronounced ZEEL), which crops up repeatedly in his letters, and it is often featured in religious contexts as well as others in which a pronounced eagerness, an ardent pursuit of a goal, and fervor are on display.
From the Greek zeios, "zeal," "emulation," "jealousy," it first came into English meaning "jealousy."
It is not always an admired trait. Talleyrand famously said, "Surtout, pas trop de zele," "Above all, not too much zeal." Since he survived the ancien regime, the Revolution, the Directory, and Napoleon, into the Bourbon Restoration, there may be something to his approach.
Example: From Graeme Wood's "What ISIS Really Wants," The Atlantic, March 2015: " We'll need to get acquainted with the Islamic State's intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal."