Word.ws English Dictionary

earnestness

Syllables: ear·nest·nessUK/ˈɜːnɪstnəs//ˈɝnɪstnəs/

earnestness noun: the quality of being earnest; sincerity; seriousness.

Noun

earnestness (countable and uncountable, plural earnestnesses)

  1. The quality of being earnest; sincerity; seriousness.
    • 22 March 2012, Scott Tobias, AV Club The Hunger Gameshttp://www.avclub.com/articles/the-hunger-games,71293/
      She’s joined, on the boys’ side, by Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), a baker’s son whose earnestness masks a gift for strategy that Katniss lacks.
    • She spoke with great earnestness about the issue.

Examples of earnestness in a sentence

  • His youthful earnestness impressed the audience.
  • with complete earnestness

All 13 example sentences with earnestness

Forms of earnestness

pluralearnestnesses

Origin of earnestness

From earnest + -ness.

Questions about earnestness

What does earnestness mean?
Earnestness means the quality of being earnest; sincerity; seriousness.
How do you use earnestness in a sentence?
His youthful earnestness impressed the audience.
What part of speech is earnestness?
Earnestness is a noun.
How do you pronounce earnestness?
Earnestness is pronounced /ˈɝnɪstnəs/ (US).
What is the plural of earnestness?
The plural of earnestness is earnestnesses.

Words near earnestness in the dictionary

  1. earnestest
  2. earnestful
  3. earnesting
  4. earnestlier
  5. earnestly
  6. earnestness
  7. earnestnesse
  8. earnestnesses
  9. earnests
  10. earnesty
  11. earneth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: earnestness (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-earnestness.ogg.

Cite this entry: “earnestness.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/earnestness. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.