different between eager vs athirst

English

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /?i??/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?i???/
• Rhymes: -i???(?)

Etymology 1

From Middle English egre, eger, from Old French egre (French aigre), from Latin acer (“sharp, keen”); see acid, acerb, etc. Compare vinegar, alegar.

Alternative forms

• aigre (obsolete)
• eagre (obsolete)

Adjective

eager (comparative more eager, superlative most eager)

1. Desirous; keen to do or obtain something.
   • 1887, John Keble, s:The Christian Year

     When to her eager lips is brought / Her infant's thrilling kiss.

   • a crowd of eager and curious schoolboys
2. (computing theory) Not employing lazy evaluation; calculating results immediately, rather than deferring calculation until they are required.

   an eager algorithm

3. (dated) Brittle; inflexible; not ductile.

   • gold itself will be sometimes so eager, (as artists call it), that it will as little endure the hammer as glass itself

4. (obsolete) Sharp; sour; acid.
5. (obsolete) Sharp; keen; bitter; severe.

Synonyms

• keen
• raring
• fain (archaic)

Derived terms

• eager beaver
• eagerly
• eagerness

Translations

Etymology 2

See eagre.

Noun

eager (plural eagers)

1. Alternative form of eagre (tidal bore).

Further reading

• eager in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• eager in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• eager at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• aeger, agree, eagre, geare, æger

English

Etymology

Old English ofþyrst, past participle of ofþyrstan (“to smart from thirst”), equivalent to a- (“of”, Etymology 8) +? thirst (verb).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?????st/
• Rhymes: -??(?)st

Adjective

athirst (comparative more athirst, superlative most athirst)

1. (archaic) Thirsty.
   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 1,^[1]

     Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

2. (figuratively) Eager or extremely desirous (for something).
   • 1817, John Keats, “Sonnet (Written on a blank space at the end of Chaucer’s tale of ‘The Floure And The Leafe’”^[2]

     I, that forever feel athirst for glory,

     Could at this moment be content to lie

     Meekly upon the grass, as those whose sobbings

     Were heard of none beside the mournful robins.

   • 1878, Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Ave Atque Vale (In Memory of Charles Baudelaire)” in Poems and Ballads, Second Series, Stanza IV,^[3]

     O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping,

     That were athirst for sleep and no more life

     And no more love, for peace and no more strife!

   • 1913, Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener, translated from the Bengali by the author, 5,^[4]

     I am restless. I am athirst for far-away things.

     My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance.

Anagrams

• ratshit, rattish, tartish, tirthas