Strong anger, frequently accompanied by a visible show of feeling.
Strong anger, frequently accompanied by a visible show of feeling — an elevated, literary word for wrath.
Distinguished by register more than trigger: a literary, somewhat archaic synonym for intense anger. It sits above plain anger but below the self-control-losing violence of rage and fury, and lacks the punitive aim of wrath, the moral framing of indignation or outrage, and the personal-slight trigger of umbrage or pique. In modern prose it survives heavily in journalistic idiom — “drew the ire of,” “raised the ire of fans.”
c. 1300, from Old French ire “anger, wrath,” from Latin ira “anger, rage, passion,” from a PIE root denoting passion. (Old English irre “anger” is a separate, unrelated word.) The same Latin ira underlies irate, irascible, and Dies Irae.
The meaning (“anger, wrath”) has been stable since c. 1300. The notable change is stylistic, not semantic: ire has become archaic/literary in everyday English while remaining productive in the fixed phrase “draw/raise the ire of.” No recent-generation semantic shift is sourced.