Adventure, Enterprise and Quest denote an undertaking, an exploit, or an experience involving hazards and requiring boldness.
Adventure so stresses the excitement or thrills associated with the encountering of risks or hardships that the word is applicable either to the event or to its emotional effect.
- seek adventures for adventure’s sake
Adventure tends to emphasize the pleasurable excitement induced by newness and strangeness as much as that induced by perils or difficulties.
- the thirst for adventure . . . a war, a crusade, a gold mine, a new country, speak to the imagination and offer… play to the confined powers
—Emerson - why fear death? Death is only a beautiful adventure
—Frohman
Enterprise is applied to an undertaking rather than an experience or to the spirit required for such an undertaking. As distinguished from adventure it implies arduousness in the undertaking and initiative, resourcefulness, and sustained energy in the one who carries it through.
- ripe for exploits and mighty enterprises
—Shak.y - fresh news is got only by enterprise and expense
—Justice Holmes - the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone
—Burke
Quest is used chiefly in poetry or elevated phrases to suggest days of chivalry and romantic adventure and implies a search or pursuit, always of something elusive and often unattainable.
- the quest of the Holy Grail