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 calculus or concretion found in the stomach or intestines of certain animals, esp. ruminants, formerly reputed to be an effective remedy for poison.
a chattering or flighty, light-headed person.
an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.
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.
an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance.
an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.
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."