Ebullient

Jim was reading an article last night and asked me if I knew what the word "ebullient" meant. I did not, so I asked him to read me the sentence, so we could get the usage. It was decribing a city government person as an "ebullient Republican". When I looked up the word, I found two meanings:

1. intensely agitated
2. having or showing liveliness and enthusiasm

Now, I think these definitions are very different. The first one is negative and the seond is positive. The common denominator is that they are both emotional. So my question is, is this Republican agitated or enthusiastic? The etimology may help.

1590s, "boiling," from L. ebullientem, prp. of ebullire "to spout out, burst out," from ex- "out" + bullire "to bubble" (see boil (v.)). Figurative sense of "enthusiastic" is first recorded 1660s.

Another definition I found was "boiling or seeming to bubble". This would support both definitions, in that the person would be about to run over with whatever emotion he was feeling. The author does his readers a disservice in not better defiining the emotion.

All in all, I would not find this a useful word because it would be apt to be misunderstood. Surely there are better words in our rich language that would paint the canvas of conversation with a more exacting stroke.