From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishzealzeal /ziːl/ noun [uncountable] ENTHUSIASTICeagerness to do something, especially to achieve a particular religious or political aimreligious/revolutionary/missionary etc zeal He approached the job with missionary zeal.in your zeal to do something In their zeal to catch drug dealers, police have ignored citizens’ basic civil rights.zeal for their zeal for privatization
Examples from the Corpus
zeal• The party converted to the free market with a zeal that out-Thatchered Thatcher and out-Reaganed Reagan.• The scientific establishment can resist a new idea with such complacent zeal that even Joshua with his trumpets would have no effect.• The turnover trouble overshadowed the fact that the Matadors played with a rare amount of zeal.• Now we saw them very rarely, and they were not hunting with their previous zeal.• Some of these arguments were presented with quiet, scientific calm, and others with prophetic zeal.• In the 60s many people brought a quasi-religious zeal to their calling.• But their zeal as reporters often took precedence over their New Deal leanings.• In their zeal to catch drug dealers, police have ignored citizens' basic civil rights.religious/revolutionary/missionary etc zeal• A new bureaucracy, the darling of the administration that establishes it, has a missionary zeal about its function.• The eyes of Mr. Morrissey gleam with a missionary zeal that shames into submission the cringing doubts of those yet unconvinced.• Professor Papert deserves high marks for missionary zeal.• A small but destructive minority has turned from religious zeal to crime, or to insurrection against its own governments.• Inside, I was gripped, as I always was, by the intense atmosphere of revolutionary zeal.• But it is obvious that one relatively small peninsula can not contain this missionary zeal indefinitely.• Whatever the job at Disney, it was approached with missionary zeal.Origin zeal (1300-1400) Late Latin zelus, from Greek zelos 