How to Use earnest in a Sentence

earnest

1 of 2 adjective

• I'll accept only an earnest apology from you.
• Vu’s film is more earnest, which at times dulls its tone.
  — Noel Murray, Los Angeles Times, 30 Dec. 2022
• If, in 1963, Patricia is the earnest naïf of the claque of housewives, Charlene is the wild card.
  — Sam Sacks, WSJ, 10 Nov. 2023
• Once the sun sets, looting and burning and killing begin in earnest.
  — Daniel Voll, Esquire, 18 June 2012
• Some of the evaluations of Williams, like Hoge’s, will be earnest.
  — Mike Freeman, USA TODAY, 13 Feb. 2024
• As the audience closed in, the room became smaller and more earnest.
  — Cierra Black, Essence, 14 Feb. 2024
• The young man was earnest, asking about how credit works and buying a home.
  — Rachel Uranga, Anchorage Daily News, 10 June 2023
• The growth of the series’ popularity was a slow and earnest burn.
  — Gene Park, Washington Post, 2 Feb. 2024
• No offense to Goddard, but the man is nothing if not earnest.
  — Angela Watercutter, WIRED, 5 Apr. 2024
• This the realm of the saints and black magic, of the earnest prayer and the evil eye and of the never-ending war between good and bad energies.
  — John MacCormack, ExpressNews.com, 7 Aug. 2020
• Democrats are getting tired of bearing the burden of being earnest.
  — Abdul El-Sayed, The New Republic, 3 Nov. 2022
• The voices are earnest, upbeat, and — by nature of the fact that they are powered by an LLM — tireless.
  — Casey Newton, The Verge, 29 Sep. 2023
• Its earnest, adult approach will likely help its cause.
  — Glenn Whipp, Los Angeles Times, 14 June 2023
• And as the shop’s Latino fry cook Rafael, Marcel Ferrin has the bright, earnest, hopefulness of youth.
  — Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune, 17 Feb. 2024
• The fantastical, earnest world of haunted dolls on eBay.
  — Ryan Katz, The New Yorker, 3 Jan. 2022
• With the search over, demolition work was starting in earnest.
  — John Peragine, New York Times, 7 June 2023
• The videos show his gut reactions to viewing people cook across the spectrum — from earnest to ridiculous.
  — Aaron Hutcherson, Washington Post, 12 Oct. 2023
• With a new administration in office and so much at stake, now is a good time to approach that task in earnest.
  — Liz Spayd, New York Times, 18 Feb. 2017
• Cain is not unlike his songs, romantic, earnest, still carrying the flush of youth.
  — Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune, 22 June 2022
• Because there’s something about the Muppets that is very earnest, not ashamed of real emotion and is never snarky.
  — Michael Schneider, Variety, 11 Apr. 2023
• In real life Shannon’s not afraid of being earnest, either.
  — Erin Jensen, USA TODAY, 12 Apr. 2022
• Hong, as close as the season comes to a real hero, is earnest and emotionally grounded.
  — Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 8 Mar. 2024
• The humor may remind you of college a cappella groups, clever and twee and earnest and pleasant enough in small doses.
  — Vulture, 13 Nov. 2023
• Rodríguez, a petite woman in her mid-30s who exudes an earnest pluck, rushed to the notary’s office soon after the clerk called her.
  — Jeneen Interlandi, New York Times, 29 Mar. 2023
• Perhaps The Critic would have done well to follow the rare bit of earnest advice Jimmy offers Nina.
  — Angie Han, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 Sep. 2023
• Many places see earnest efforts come and go with the rotation frequency of fashion trends.
  — Stephan Rabimov, Forbes, 29 Nov. 2023
• Nick Solak is going to get an earnest opportunity to win the job.
  — Evan Grant, Dallas News, 12 Feb. 2021
• Powell is quite funny when Eliza meets a bunch of upper-crust types and proceeds, in dead earnest, to mimic each one of the aristocrats.
  — Don Aucoin, BostonGlobe.com, 20 Apr. 2023
• Even at 7 feet, Embiid’s attempt to contest the shot was the kind that looked earnest enough on film but probably didn’t affect it.
  — Julian Benbow, BostonGlobe.com, 11 May 2023
• Only a brief, earnest moment with Jerome LaMaar put a pause on their conversation.
  — Isiah Magsino, Vogue, 15 Sep. 2022

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earnest

2 of 2 noun

• Land Rover began importing cars to the U.S. in earnest in the ’80s.
  — Norman Vanamee, Town & Country, 6 Jan. 2023
• The battle for control of the living room just began in earnest.
  — David Streitfeld, New York Times, 18 May 2016
• The journey starts in earnest in September, when the team hosts Nigeria for two friendlies.
  — Anne M. Peterson, San Francisco Chronicle, 25 July 2022
• Construction starts in earnest toward the end of this year and is expected to be completed by the start of 2028.
  — Laura Paddison, CNN, 26 Mar. 2023
• Whole economies bank on the flurry of purchases that begin in earnest on Black Friday.
  — Stephen Humphries, The Christian Science Monitor, 22 Dec. 2022
• Kim, who grew up in Busan and studied at the Sorbonne, explained that Oh hadn’t painted in earnest until his sixties.
  — E. Tammy Kim, The New Yorker, 13 Jan. 2023
• With the free agent outfield market starting to move in earnest over the last week, the Rangers may have started to hone in on their top target: Outfielder Michael Conforto.
  — Dallas News, 19 Dec. 2022
• Now fast-forward several decades, to the replay-review era, which began in earnest in 2013 and has woven itself into the fabric of the game.
  — Devin Gordon, New York Times, 30 Mar. 2023
• Research into using sodium for batteries began in earnest in the 1970s, led then by the United States.
  — Keith Bradsher, New York Times, 12 Apr. 2023
• Books are an addiction, that, when aroused in earnest, is rarely calmed.
  — Joseph Epstein, The Middle of My Tether, 1983
• Almost all of the surveys have agreed that Trump and DeSantis are far and away the front-runners for now, with several months to go before the race starts in earnest with an initial debate planned for August.
  — Dave Goldiner New York Daily News (tns), al, 28 Feb. 2023
• With the release of Iron Man 3 this Friday, summer movies begin arriving in earnest, which is the time the spiritual state of the American public is revealed.
  — Stephen Marche, Esquire, 1 May 2013
• The work began in earnest in the early 2000s with the investigation of one of the most energetic events in the cosmos: supernovas, the titanic explosions that end the lives of massive stars.
  — Adam Frank, The Atlantic, 3 Jan. 2023
• A guest brings up a television show in which each episode features a different sect of Americans, preparing in earnest for a different kind of doomsday.
  — Eric Boman, Vogue, 29 Apr. 2015
• The divorce proceedings began in earnest, and they were earnestly vile.
  — Angie Bowie Et Al., US, 23 Nov. 1982
• The most immediate question is whether the British can map out in advance their negotiating partners’ positions before the talks start in earnest.
  — Stephen Fidler, WSJ, 6 Oct. 2016
• Noma’s closing comes as restaurants struggle with rising food and labor costs, which began in earnest with the pandemic and have continued with inflation.
  — Michelle Cheng, Quartz, 10 Jan. 2023
• The sidewalks were crowded as women and men argued and bargained with each other as the shopping day began in earnest.
  — Harold Robbins, The Storyteller, 1985
• A large portion of the spoil was set aside to be sent to Carthage as an earnest of the riches of further conquest.
  — Ernle Bradford, Hannibal, 1981
• The trouble begins in earnest when Owen, a computer engineer at a tech startup called The Shop, goes off the grid on the same day the firm’s headquarters is raided by regulatory investigators.
  — Joshua Alston, Variety, 12 Apr. 2023
• At-home brain stimulation began in earnest in the early 2010s, Wexler said, despite pushback from clinicians and scientists, who were concerned about safety.
  — Berkeley Lovelace Jr., NBC News, 4 Feb. 2023
• Consumers may not see relief for several months, with EY Parthenon's Daco forecasting that inflation is unlikely to start falling in earnest until the second quarter of 2023.
  — Aimee Picchi, CBS News, 4 Nov. 2022
• Initially, after opening to tepid numbers on April 5, a Wednesday, Amazon insiders were predicting a five-day opening of just $16 million, but traffic picked up in earnest by Friday.
  — Pamela McClintock, The Hollywood Reporter, 13 Apr. 2023
• But Sanders appeared to be offering in earnest, prompted in part by the Clinton campaign’s decision, announced Monday, not to follow through on an earlier pledge to debate him in California.
  — John Cassidy, The New Yorker, 27 May 2016
• Then the festival gets going in earnest on July 17 with workshops on everything from instrumental performance to dancing, painting and cooking.
  — Anchorage Daily News, 29 May 2023
• On Easter Monday the rain began in earnest.
  — Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia, (1977) 2003
• When I had promised to pay for his information and given him an earnest, he told me that he had made two journeys between Carfax and a house in Piccadilly, and had taken from this house to the latter nine great boxes, "main heavy ones," with a horse and cart hired by him for this purpose.
  — Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897
• In 1942, Roosevelt, Stimson, and Marshall all recognized the degree of fraud in MacArthur but let him get away with his act because in those black days morale required an invincible hero in the Pacific as an earnest of eventual victory there.
  — Paul Fussell, Wartime, 1989
• Land Rover began importing cars to the U.S. in earnest in the ’80s.
  — Norman Vanamee, Town & Country, 6 Jan. 2023
• The battle for control of the living room just began in earnest.
  — David Streitfeld, New York Times, 18 May 2016

Last Updated: 9 May 2024