Keen, enthusiastic, often impatient desire to do or have something.
Keen, enthusiastic, often impatient desire to do or have something — the family's most action-oriented member.
Keen, enthusiastic desire with “ardor and enthusiasm and sometimes impatience at delay.” Where anticipation and expectancy are states of looking ahead, eagerness adds a forward lean toward action — it wants the thing now. Unlike hope it is about appetite and drive rather than belief in an outcome; unlike sustained enthusiasm or zeal it is typically tied to a specific imminent thing; it differs from impatience in being positive desire (which may include impatience as a component).
From eager (late 13c., originally “strenuous, ardent, fierce”), from Old French aigre “sour, harsh; keen,” from Latin acer “keen, sharp.” (Same root as vinegar.)
A shift from “sharp/sour/fierce” toward “full of keen desire” — the enthusiastic-desire sense is an English innovation, while a “pungent, sharp-edged” sense lingered into the 19th century (Shakespeare's “eager” = biting). No reliable recent-generation shift.