EAGERNESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does eagerness mean? 

• EAGERNESS (noun)
  The noun EAGERNESS has 2 senses:

1. a positive feeling of wanting to push ahead with something

2. prompt willingness

  Familiarity information: EAGERNESS used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• EAGERNESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A positive feeling of wanting to push ahead with something

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

avidity; avidness; eagerness; keenness

Hypernyms ("eagerness" is a kind of...):

enthusiasm (a feeling of excitement)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "eagerness"):

ardor; ardour; elan; zeal (a feeling of strong eagerness (usually in favor of a person or cause))

Derivation:

eager (having or showing keen interest or intense desire or impatient expectancy)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Prompt willingness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

eagerness; forwardness; readiness; zeal

Context example:

he tried to explain his forwardness in battle

Hypernyms ("eagerness" is a kind of...):

willingness (cheerful compliance)

 Context examples 

One Ear strained the full length of the stick toward the intruder and whined with eagerness.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

In a minute he was back again, his face quivering with eagerness.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He looked and spoke with eagerness: his old impetuosity was rising.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Catherine, recollecting herself, grew ashamed of her eagerness, and began earnestly to assure him that her attention had been fixed without the smallest apprehension of really meeting with what he related.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

This decision checked Mary's eagerness, and stopped her short in the midst of the Elliot countenance.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

“What is he doing?” she said, with an eagerness that seemed enough to consume her like a fire.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He was surprised at the eagerness which animated the whole team and which was communicated to him; but still more surprising was the change wrought in Dave and Sol-leks.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

“Now, Watson, now!” cried Holmes with frenzied eagerness.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He fought to suppress the eagerness in his voice.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The coast once clear, our travellers soon sat down and dispatched what the robbers had left, with as much eagerness as if they had not expected to eat again for a month.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)