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.
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
“Children’s eagerness to eat was a cross-class phenomenon then,” she relates, “just as pickiness is a cross-class phenomenon now.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 20, 2026
Her genuine pride in Summers’ work, and eagerness for it to succeed, is tangible in every post and promotional video — just like Kaye and Harvey imagined.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 18, 2026
Ghohg the Protector would not see the elf on the first day, that would show too much eagerness.
From "The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge" by M.T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin
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.
