Full of serious intent or sincere feeling; showing that something matters deeply to you.
From Old English 'earne' meaning serious or grave, combined with the suffix '-ful' meaning full of. The word evolved from Germanic roots to describe something filled with earnestness or genuine concern.
This word is basically the adjectival form of 'earnest,' but it's so rarely used today that you might think it's made up—yet it appears in Middle English texts showing how medieval writers loved adding '-ful' to almost anything to intensify meaning.
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