Anxious or excited uncertainty while awaiting an outcome.
Anxious or excited uncertainty while awaiting an outcome — the tension of not yet knowing.
The only member defined by unresolved uncertainty plus tension: an anxious or excited not-knowing while awaiting an outcome. Unlike anticipation it requires the outcome to be genuinely uncertain; it is the opposite pole from expectancy (settled expecting); not primarily about desire (hope) or drive (eagerness). Usually anxiety-tinged, though pleasurable in entertainment (the “suspense” genre). You are held in suspense by something external.
c. 1400, originally legal “abeyance,” from Latin suspensus “hung up,” from suspendere “to hang up; interrupt” (sub “up from under” + pendere “to hang”). The literal image is “left hanging.”
From the legal “abeyance” sense (c. 1400) to “mental uncertainty with anxiety” (mid-15c.), perhaps via “having the mind suspended.” The genre label for suspenseful fiction/film is attested by 1951. No reliable recent-generation shift.