eagerness
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of eagerness
Explanation
Eagerness is a characteristic of being excited and prepared to do something. Shooting your hand in the air and shouting, "Me! Me!" when your teacher asks for a volunteer is a good way to show your eagerness. A basketball team displays its eagerness by running onto the court at the start of the game, and a puppy's eagerness to lick your face and nibble your fingers is either the cutest thing about it, or one of the many reasons you don't like puppies. Eagerness and eager are both positive words, but in the thirteenth century eager meant "fierce or angry," and it shares a Latin root with the sour word acrid, or "bitter."
Vocabulary lists containing eagerness
A Single Shard
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The Suffix -ness, Part 1
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Greed
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
But you can still discern the same rush, the same eagerness to assume that everything is going to turn out great without taking many steps to make sure that it does.
From Slate • Jun. 4, 2026
President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spent their first day of bilateral talks on Thursday showing an eagerness to manage the economic rivalry between their countries.
From Barron's • May 14, 2026
The market timers’ eagerness to instead believe that the worst is over is more reminiscent of the “slope of hope” that markets slide down.
From MarketWatch • Apr. 9, 2026
On the other side, Xi's eagerness to meet Lee signals the pressure he faces in finding a regional ally, Park Seung-chan, professor of China studies at Yongin University told the BBC.
From BBC • Jan. 4, 2026
They were both more accomplished and better read than I was; but with eagerness I followed in the path of knowledge they had trodden before me.
From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
