earnest: [OE] Earnest was originally a much more red-blooded word than it is today. It comes ultimately from a Germanic base *ern- which denoted ‘vigour’ or ‘briskness’. To this was added the noun suffix – ost (earnest was originally a noun), giving Old English eornost, which appears at first to have meant ‘intense passion’, and particularly ‘zeal in battle’. However, by the end of the Old English period there is already evidence of a semantic toning down from ‘intensity of feeling’ to ‘seriousness of feeling’ (as opposed to ‘frivolity’), a process which has culminated in modern English connotations of ‘over-seriousness’.
