Earnest means deeply sincere and serious about what you do. An earnest young man, in earnest, deadly earnest.
It is admiring and faintly amused at once: earnest people mean every word, which is a virtue and occasionally tiring. In earnest means for real rather than in play — the work began in earnest. There is a separate noun earnest meaning a down payment or token of what is to come: an earnest of good faith. Note that The Importance of Being Earnest turns on the pun with the name Ernest.
1adjectiveearnestDeeply sincere and serious about what you do.
“He was an earnest young student who took notes on everything.”
2nountokenA token or down payment of what is to come.
“The small gift was an earnest of the greater rewards to come.”
earnest is a quality of sincerity.
Old English eornost meant seriousness or battle, from a Germanic root about vigour. The fighting sense faded, and the deposit sense is a different word entirely, from Hebrew through Greek.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₃er-
Proto-Germanic
*ernustuz — earnest, strength, solidity, struggle, fight
Old English
eornest
Middle English
ernest
English, today
earnest
Built from
From Middle English ernest, eornest, from Old English eornest, eornost, eornust (“earnestness, zeal, seriousness, battle”), from Proto-Germanic ernustuz (“earnest, strength, solidity, struggle, fight”), a derivative of Proto-Germanic arniz (“efficient, capable, diligent, sure”), from Proto-Indo-European er- (“to cause to move, arouse, increase”). Cognate with West Frisian earnst (“earnest, seriousness”), Dutch ernst (“seriousness, gravity, earnest”), German Ernst (“seriousness, earnestness, zeal, vigour”), Icelandic ern (“brisk, vigorous”), Gothic 𐌰𐍂𐌽𐌹𐌱𐌰 (“secure, certain, sure”). The adjective is from Middle English eornest, from Old English eornoste (“earnest, zealous, serious”), from the noun. Cognate with frr ernste (“earnest”), Middle Low German ernest, ernst (“serious, earnest”), German ernst (“serious, earnest”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sharper Adjectives