Passion refers to any great, strong, powerful emotion, especially romantic love or extreme hate. It commonly describes fervor, determination, an object of passionate or romantic love or strong romantic interest, and sexual intercourse, especially when very emotional, which gives the term a broader and more practical sense than a single short definition would suggest. Depending on context, it can also point to a display, musical composition, or play meant to commemorate the suffering of Jesus, suffering or enduring of imposed or inflicted pain; any suffering or distress, and the state of being acted upon; subjection to an external agent or influence; a passive condition, so the category can cover literal uses, related ideas, and more figurative extensions of the same core meaning. Taken together, these meanings present Passion as a flexible theme rather than a narrowly technical label, covering the central idea people usually mean when they use the word while still leaving room for closely related senses that appear in real language. Additional shades of meaning include the capacity of being affected by external agents; susceptibility of impressions from external agents, an innate attribute, property, or quality of a thing, disorder of the mind; madness, to suffer pain or sorrow; to experience a passion; to be extremely agitated, and to give a passionate character to, which reinforce how the category can stretch across adjacent but still recognizable uses of the same term.
