| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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3. Word Choice: New Uses, Common Confusion, and Constraints
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| § 32. anxious |
| People have been using anxious as a synonym for eager for over 250 years, and for over 100 years language critics have been objecting to it. Objectors feel that anxious should be used only when the person it refers to is worried or uneasy about the upcoming event. By this thinking, it is OK to say We are anxious to see the strike settled soon but not We are anxious to see the new show of contemporary sculpture at the museum. The Usage Panel splits down the middle on this issue. Just 52 percent accept anxious in the second example. | 1 |
| So left to your own devices, what should you do? Using anxious to mean “eager” can have its own effectiveness, at least in colloquial discourse, since it adds emotional urgency to an assertion. It implies that the subject so strongly desires a certain outcome that frustration of that desire will lead to unhappiness. In this way, it resembles the informal adjective dying in sentences such as I’m dying to see your new baby. So use anxious when it fits your purpose. | 2 |
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| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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