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Smallness; meagerness; slenderness; fineness, thinness. [R.] Paley.

The state of being fervent or warm; ardor; warmth of feeling or devotion; eagerness. When you pray, let it be with attention, with fervency, and with perseverance. Wake.

Eagerness; ardor; as, it is difficult to restrain the forwardness of youth.

To pant with eagerness; to show vehement desire. Quenching the gasping furrows' thirst with rain. Spenser.

To fixx the eyes in a steady and earnest look; to look with eagerness or curiosity, as in admiration, astonishment, or with studious attention. Why stand ye gazing up into heaven Acts i. 11.

quality of being impatient; want of endurance of pain, suffering, opposition, or delay; eagerness for change, or for something expected; restlessness; chafing of spirit; fretfulness; passion; as, the impatience of a child or an invalid. I then, . . . Out of my grief and my impatience, Answered neglectingly. Shak. With…

The state or quality of being insatiable; insatiableness. Eagerness for increase of possession deluges the soul, and we sink into the gulfs of insatiability. Rambler.

See Juggernaut.

delay to assert a claim. It ill became him to take advantage of such a laches with the eagerness of a shrewd attorney. Macaulay.

To feel a strong or morbid desire or craving; to wish for something with eagerness; -- followed by an infinitive, or by after or for. I long to see you. Rom. i. 11. I have longed after thy precepts. Ps. cxix. 40. I have longed for thy salvation. Ps. cxix. 174. Nicomedes, longing for herrings, was supplied with fresh on…

Longing desire; eagerness to possess or enjoy; -- in a had sense; as, the lust of gain. The lust of reigning. Milton.

*ly, adv. The mythic turf where danced the nymphs. Mrs. Browning. Hengist and Horsa, Vortigern and Rowena, Arthur and Mordred, are mythical persons, whose very existence may be questioned. Macaulay.

In a newfangled manner; with eagerness for novelty. [Obs.] Sir T. More.

h life and a vigorous. J. H. Newman. What a note of youth, of imagination, of impulsive eagerness, there was through it all ! Mrs. Humphry Ward.

To breathe quickly or in a labored manner, as after exertion or from eagerness or excitement; to respire with heaving of the breast; to gasp. Pluto plants for breath from out his cell. Dryden.

To devoir with great eagerness. Like rats that ravin down their proper bane. Shak.

Eagerness for plunder; rapacity; extortion. Luke xi. 39.

Devouring with rapacious eagerness; furiously voracious; hungry even to rage; as, a ravenous wolf or vulture.

To enter into something with undue haste and eagerness, or without due deliberation and preparation; as, to rush business or speculation. They . . . never think it to be a part of religion to rush into the office of princes and ministers. Sprat.

The act of seeing sights; eagerness for novelties or curiosities.