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anxious: characterized by extreme uneasiness of mind or brooding fear about some contingency
—Merriam-Webster
“I am so anxious to see you!”
How many times have you heard or said this? Most of the time, anxious was probably not the word to use.
Say your best friend is about to arrive for an out-of-town visit. You are more likely to be eager or excited for her visit than anxious. Anxious has a negative connotation. Anxious means you are in a fit of hand-wringing nervousness, considering all that could go wrong. If you are simply happy for your friend to come and are expecting the trip to go smoothly, then you are not anxious; you are just excited and eager.
Here are examples of anxious, excited, and eager used the correct way:
I am excited to get my package in the mail.
I am eager for my trip to the Bahamas.
I am anxious that this airplane will crash.
Note that the first two sentences have positive connotations, and the second has a negative connotation.
Can these words be interchangeable?
There has been a trend of using anxious, eager, and excited interchangeably. However, I still think there should be a distinction. Remember that anxiety is a medical condition, which often requires medication and treatment. It can be a very serious and life-altering condition for those who have it. Using the word so casually (and incorrectly) downplays, in my opinion, its severity. People who don’t have anxiety already tend to not understand how difficult living with a form of anxiety can be. Misusing it in our speech adds to this confusion.
Quiz
In each sentence is the word anxious. Determine in each sentence if the word is used correctly.
1. Edwin is anxious that his dinner plans will fall through.
2. Edwin is anxious to eat his ice cream.
3. Edwin is anxious for the first day of school, thinking of all that could go wrong.
4. Edwin is anxious to open his birthday present.
Answers:
1. correct 2. incorrect 3. correct 4. incorrect
Erin Servais is the founder of Dot and Dash, LLC, an author-services company focusing on women writers and offering a range of editing, coaching, and social media packages.
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Grammar Party 
Good post Erin! A couple of years ago I became aware of my bad habit of using anxious instead of eager. I get a bit sick of eager, too, so try to change up my language. Maybe the trick is just not to get too excitable. Thanks!
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I am surprised you used ‘excited for her visit.’ To me, excited for isn’t standard English. I realize people use it but I will not join them. I recommend you research the prepositions that we normally use with excited.
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Hi–this came up on twitter 7 years later (today!) and I’m going to challenge the post. Merriam Webster has “eager” as its 3rd definition, and the etymology of that definition of anxious (as in: “I’m anxious to see you”, or “we’re anxious to get going”) dates back to the 17th century–so it’s not as if it’s a new development. I’m wondering if that usage is regional?
From M.W.:
“The fact that individual words can have multiple senses that are closely related in meaning is something which many people find objectionable about the English language. Anxious is an example of such a word, as people will use it to mean “worried,” “eager (but with an undertone of worry),” and simply “eager.”
The word has been used in the sense of “eager” for a considerable length of time, with evidence going back at least to the 17th century.”
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That’s fair. I’m much less pedantic now than I was when I wrote this. But, this one still irks me a bit, even if it is technically accepted.
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