The Latin root meant suffering, but career advice turned it into a command.
The word passion entered English around 1200 from the Old French passion, borrowed from the Late Latin passio, meaning "suffering" or "enduring." The Latin verb at the root, pati, meant "to endure" or "to undergo." For centuries, the word's primary meaning in English was the suffering of Christ on the Cross.1
The meaning shifted gradually. By the late fourteenth century, passion could mean any intense emotion. By the 1580s, it referred specifically to sexual desire. By the 1630s, it had widened to include strong enthusiasm for any subject.2 The etymological path runs from suffering to emotion to enthusiasm, a journey in which the original meaning of pain was progressively replaced by pleasure.
The career advice industry adopted passion as a central concept in the late twentieth century. "Follow your passion" became one of the most repeated phrases in commencement speeches, self-help books, and career counseling sessions. A 2005 Stanford commencement address by Steve Jobs, in which he urged graduates to find what they love, became one of the most viewed speeches in internet history.3
Research complicates the advice. Psychologist Carol Dweck and colleagues have argued that a "find your passion" framing implies interests are fixed, discouraging people from developing new ones. A 2018 study published in Psychological Science found that people exposed to a "find your passion" message were more likely to abandon a new interest at the first sign of difficulty than those told that interests are developed.4 The word that once meant to endure is now used to describe something that should come easily.