Carolynn’s Clues :: Are You Eager or Just Anxious?

by Carolynn Carey

It seems that everyone has a pet peeve when it comes to grammar. Back in the days when I was an editor of a newsletter that went out to several thousand college graduates, I tried my best to produce an error-free publication. Invariably, however, I would step on someone’s pet peeve, and I’d get an irate letter to the editor.

One that caught me by surprise came when an article I published in the newsletter used the word “anxious” incorrectly. The article’s author had commented that she was anxious for an event to take place. A reader informed me that because the event was anticipated, the correct word would have been “eager.”

For some reason, I’d just never thought about “anxious vs. eager” before, so I checked my trusty style manuals and discovered that the reader was, of course, correct. In the Grammar and Usage section of The Chicago Manual of Style, the command after the word “anxious” is to “avoid it as a synonym for eager.” The meanings given for “anxious” are “distressed” and “worried.”

Why did I not know this? I honestly think I’d been using the two words interchangeably for years. Now that I know the difference, I stop and think. Am I eager or am I anxious? Am I looking forward to something with anticipation, or am I dreading it?

What about you? Are you ever anxious about misusing “anxious”? Are you eager to use “eager” correctly?

Or are you like me, having spent the majority of your years neither knowing the difference, nor caring?

Tagged as: anxious, eager, grammar