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(1) The singer was surrounded by fans who were going wild.

(2) The singer was surrounded by enthusiastic fans.

Do these two sentences have the same meaning?

(1) is my English translation of a Japanese sentence, but Google Translate translates the same Japanese sentence into (2), hence my question.

I assume that "were going wild" signifies a temporary state, but I have no idea whether "enthusiastic" signifies a temporary state.

I used Google Translate because my intuition told me that (1) would sound unnatural to native speakers of English.

[Edit] I don't know exactly what "enthusiastic fans" in (2) means. There seem to be two possibilities:

(a) "enthusiastic" signifies a temporary state. The fans were enthusiastic at the time of their surrounding the singer.

(b) "enthusiastic" does not signify a temporary state. "enthusiastic fans" is being used in the same way that "enthusiastic fans" is being used in "Tony and Mary were enthusiastic fans of the singer".

(I feel that (b) is more likely.)

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    "going wild" describes what they're doing, "enthusiastic" describes how they feel. One is a verb, the other is an adjective. So they don't quite have the same meaning, although Japanese usually doesn't map precisely to English from what I know, so it may be appropriate to substitute your translation for Google Translate's.
    – Maciej Stachowski
    Commented Oct 12 at 2:09
  • Thank you very much. The original Japanese sentence is close in meaning to "The singer was surrounded by joyfully excited fans". The most important thing for me is whether "enthusiastic" in (2) signifies a temporary state.
    – Kaguyahime
    Commented Oct 12 at 3:50
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    You can be enthusiastic about an activity as an ongoing state, but the implication here is that the fans were displaying their enthusiasm for the singer by the way they behaved on that particular occasion.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Oct 12 at 8:13
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    Enthusiasm in certain special contexts can be wild, such as religious ritualistic enthusiasm where people become rapt and speak in tongues, or have bacchanals or orgies when they are "possessed by a god" and get inebriated. There are indeed times when fans of pop stars behave in those ways. Just look at the girls in the audience of The Beatles and other groups from the 1960s. A journalist writing about a pop star could use the word enthusiastic and expect the readers to pick up on such "overtones" even though in most daily uses the word "enthusiastic" is simply a synonym for "avid".
    – TimR
    Commented Oct 12 at 12:54
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    @Kaguyahime Many native speakers of English would be unaware of the "religious ecstasy/wild behavior" meaning of "enthusiasm", since most often it is used of rather banal things like hobbies and outings and such.
    – TimR
    Commented Oct 12 at 20:35

4 Answers 4

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The difference is mostly rhetorical.

You don't mean that the fans were really changing into animals like bears or monkeys, nor that they were becoming cavemen. Instead you are using a figure of speech. They were behaving in some way like wild things, in particular, I understand this figure of speech to mean that they were very enthusiastic. So much so that they were a little bit like wild animals. They might have been making "whoop" noises, or waving their arms without control.

The rhetorical effect of "going wild" is very different from "enthusiastic" It has a different emotional feeling. The google translate version is simple, plain and unemotional. Your version is stronger, more colourful, and hints at your opinion and feelings about the fans.

Compare the recent question about "dearth" and "shortage". The choice of words is often not about the meaning, but about the feelings that the words evoke in the listener.

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  • This is totally wrong. Merriam Webster gives (2) ": emotionally overcome wild with grief also : passionately eager or enthusiastic was wild to own a toy train —J. C. Furnas" as one meaning and that is the sense "wild" would be used for enthusiastic fans. @jamesk
    – S K
    Commented Oct 12 at 13:40
  • Yes, so what? M-W often includes senses that are derived metaphorically from the core sense. "Going wild" is still a figure of speech, whether or not it is common enough for the dictionaries to have picked up the meaning.
    – James K
    Commented Oct 12 at 16:22
  • Eventually a metaphor becomes so common that it ceases to be considered figurative, and is just one of the normal meanings of the word. Think of all the definitions of "head" -- they all derive from the body part, but we don't really think of them as metaphors anymore.
    – Barmar
    Commented Oct 12 at 16:30
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"Going wild" here means "exuberantly joyful" or "ecstatic" - and is not on the tame-wild spectrum.

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Typically, if fans are going wild, it refers to some activity, such as cheering, jumping, or screaming, that they're doing at that moment. It's a temporary state because they will stop doing it at some point.

Enthusiastic doesn't necessarily involve doing anything. It's more of a feeling than an action.

Very enthusiastic fans will often go wild.

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  • While this is technically true, it's usually hard to tell someone's feelings if they're not demonstrating it.
    – Barmar
    Commented Oct 12 at 16:10
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Enthusiasm is an inner feeling. How a person expresses their enthusiasm could vary greatly. Some might be "quietly enthusiastic"; you can listen enthusiastically.

"Going wild" by itself is a pretty vague descriptive phrase, but it is described in one dictionary as "to behave in a very excited uncontrolled way*", which would suggest some physical movement. It makes one think of people 'jumping' around, waving their arms about etc.

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