full of mental distress or uneasiness because of fear of danger or misfortune; greatly worried; solicitous: Her parents were anxious about her poor health.
2.
earnestly desirous; eager (usually followed by an infinitive or for ): anxious to please; anxious for our happiness.
3.
attended with or showing solicitude or uneasiness: anxious forebodings.
Origin: 1615–25; < Latinanxius worried, distressed, derivative of angere to strangle, pain, distress; cf. anguish, -ous
Usage note The earliest sense of anxious (in the 17th century) was “troubled” or “worried”: We are still anxious for the safety of our dear sons in battle. Its meaning “earnestly desirous, eager” arose in the mid-18th century: We are anxious to see our new grandson. Some insist that anxious must always convey a sense of distress or worry and object to its use in the sense of “eager,” but such use is fully standard.
a children's mummer's parade, as on the Fourth of July, with prizes for the best costumes.
an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance.
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
a scrap or morsel of food left at a meal.
a gadget; dingus; thingumbob.
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
1620s, from L. anxius "solicitous, uneasy, troubled in mind," from ang(u)ere "choke, cause distress" (see anger). The same image is in Serbo-Croatian tjeskoba "anxiety," lit. "tightness, narrowness."