earnestness
Americannoun
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seriousness and zeal in intention, purpose, or effort.
Socrates was a man of great moral earnestness, and exemplified in his own life some of the noblest virtues.
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depth and sincerity of feeling.
Speak with conviction and earnestness, and the people watching and listening will believe you.
Etymology
Origin of earnestness
Explanation
Earnestness is a quality of sincere interest, belief, or opinion. The earnestness with which you recite your favorite poem might make your English class stop whispering and really listen. Your favorite history teacher's earnestness can be seen in the serious, intense way he talks about the Civil War or Prohibition. Little kids often approach the world with an earnestness that's reflected in their amazement and wonder at seemingly ordinary things, like fireflies or simple magic tricks. Earnestness comes from the adjective earnest, "showing sincere conviction," which has an Old English root, eornoste, "zealous."
Vocabulary lists containing earnestness
The Devil's Arithmetic
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Dracula
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Lee Surrenders to Grant (1865)
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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.
Earnestness triggered our deepest national crisis in the 1860s and fueled the redemptive civil-rights movement a century later.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jul. 2, 2026
Earnestness has the edge over sense; science, if you want to call it that — it often amounts to magic here — just serves the drama, the philosophy and the themes.
From Los Angeles Times • May 4, 2022
Earnestness is difficult to learn or feign; it is a quality that a performer — or a person, for that matter — simply has.
From New York Times • Feb. 24, 2022
Earnestness, as Yovanovitch showed, is not entirely dead in American public life.
From The New Yorker • Nov. 16, 2019
Earnestness is ever deeply solemn: first, as I listened to that prayer, I wondered at his; then, when it continued and rose, I was touched by it, and at last awed.
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.
