fa·nat·i·cal

[fuh-nat-i-kuhl]
adjective
motivated or characterized by an extreme, uncritical enthusiasm or zeal, as in religion or politics.
Also, fanatic.

Origin:
1540–50; fanatic + -al1

Related forms
fa·nat·i·cal·ly, adverb
fa·nat·i·cal·ness, noun
non·fa·nat·i·cal, adjective
non·fa·nat·i·cal·ly, adverb
un·fa·nat·i·cal, adjective
un·fa·nat·i·cal·ly, adverb

Synonyms
enthusiastic, zealous, frenzied, rabid. See intolerant, radical.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
Cite This Source Link To fanatical
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World English Dictionary
fanatical (fəˈnætɪkəl) [Click for IPA pronunciation guide]
 
—adj
surpassing what is normal or accepted in enthusiasm for or belief in something; excessively or unusually dedicated or devoted
 
fa'natically
 
—adv

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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00:10
Fanatical is always a great word to know.
So is flibbertigibbet. Does it mean:
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
a chattering or flighty, light-headed person.
LEARN MORE UNUSUAL WORDS WITH WORD DYNAMO...
Etymonline
Word Origin & History

fanatical
1540s, from fanatic + -al (1). Related: Fanatically.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
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Example sentences
Pound thundered out social and political views which later he would shun as wrong and fanatical.
Those fanatical consumers came to be known as audiophiles.
Such a strategy is the only way for the healthy aspects of dance, and sports, to triumph over its fanatical and unhealthy aspects.
But over the past few decades it has attracted fanatical thugs to its ranks.
Matching Quote
"There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog's one defence. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance—and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory.... Their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes; and without insisting on a rigid classifica tion, we may, without too much fear of contradiction, say that, in this sense, Dante belongs to the first category, Shakespeare to the second."
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