• (GA) IPA: /ˈiɡɚ/
• (RP) IPA: /ˈiːɡə/

eager (comparative eagerer, superlative eagerest)

1. (obsolete) Sharp; sour; acid.
2. (obsolete) Sharp; keen; bitter; severe.
3. Desirous; keen to do or obtain something.
   • 1887, John Keble, ''''

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

   • 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, OCLC 223202227 ↗:

     a crowd of eager and curious schoolboys

   The hounds were eager in the chase.
   I was eager to show my teacher how much I'd learned over the holidays.
   You stayed up all night to get to the front of the queue. You must be very eager to get tickets.
4. Brittle; inflexible; not ductile.
   • 1689 (indicated as 1690)​, [John Locke], chapter 2, in An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Thomas Basset, […], OCLC 153628242 ↗:

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

5. (comptheory) Not employing lazy evaluation; calculating results immediately, rather than deferring calculation until they are required.

   an eager algorithm

• raring

• French: désireux, enthousiaste, impatient
• German: begierig, gierig, eifrig
• Italian: avido
• Portuguese: ávido
• Russian: жа́ждущий
• Spanish: impaciente, ilusionado, entusiasmado, ávido, anhelante

eager (plural eagers)

1. Alternative form of eagre (tidal bore).

1. Surname