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.
"Eagerness, excitement, anxiousness, to give this organization and the Jones family everything they invested in," Prescott said.
From Fox News • Mar. 10, 2021
Eagerness, even more, something that was surely anxiety, shone in his eyes as he asked the question.
From The Dweller on the Threshold by Hichens, Robert Smythe
What say'st thou, my Girl? said he, with some Eagerness; had'st thou not better stay with me, than go to my Sister Davers?
From Pamela Censured by Anonymous
Learning the cause of their sadness, because the Holy Eagerness which they had was not cooled, he provided a Piragua of his own, very capacious, with Indian rowers and Supplies necessary for all.
From History of the Spanish Conquest of Yucatan and of the Itzas Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Hard University. Vol. VII. by Means, Philip Ainsworth
Eagerness would not let me wait long, and I was off across the meadows towards the church, though not without sad misgivings as soon as the last house was left well behind me.
From Moonfleet by Falkner, John Meade
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.
