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Is the origin of passionarity and passion the same?

Lexico gives the etymology of passion but has no entry for passionarity.

It seems like these two words are very similar, but have different meanings.

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  • Please include the research you’ve done. It seems that this is a niche term introduced by a Soviet ethnologist. There are not a vast number of hits on a Google search. Commented Dec 17, 2021 at 19:07

2 Answers 2

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Apparently they have the same origin:

Passionarity:

(From Latin passio, passion), the term introduced by Russian ethnographer and historian Lev Gumilev to signify the ability for and urge towards changing the environment, both social and natural, or, physically speaking, towards the disturbance of inertia of the aggregative state of an environment (Gumilev, 1990).

(creativity.netslova.ru)

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They both ultimately come from the same Latin word.

Passion:

c. 1200, "the sufferings of Christ on the Cross; the death of Christ," from Old French passion "Christ's passion, physical suffering" (10c.), from Late Latin passionem (nominative passio) "suffering, enduring," from past-participle stem of Latin pati "to endure, undergo, experience," a word of uncertain origin. The notion is "that which must be endured." — Etymonline

Passionarity:

(From Latin passio, passion), the term introduced by Russian ethnographer and historian Lev Gumilev to signify the ability for and urge towards changing the environment, both social and natural, or, physically speaking, towards the disturbance of inertia of the aggregative state of an environment (Gumilev, 1990). — Dictionary of Creativity

The original word used by Gumilev is пассионарность (passionarnost). That ending bit is a suffix that doesn't have a cognate in English. Google translates it as -arity.

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  • What's the point, except academic.
    – Lambie
    Commented Mar 29, 2022 at 17:14
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    I don't understand the definition. IBut in any case, in neither English nor Latin is there a productive stem passionar-, apart from passionary, which is a book.
    – Colin Fine
    Commented Mar 29, 2022 at 17:29

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