earnest

IPA: ˈɝnɪst

Gravity; serious purpose; earnestness.
Seriousness; reality; actuality (as opposed to joking or pretence)
A sum of money paid in advance as a deposit; hence, a pledge, a guarantee, an indication of something to come.
A male given name from the Germanic languages, of occasional usage, variant of Ernest.

(said of an action or an utterance) Serious, sincere, ingenuous.
(with a positive sense) Focused in the pursuit of an objective; honestly eager to obtain or do.
Intent; focused; showing a lot of concentration.
(said of a person or a person's character) Possessing or characterised by seriousness.
Strenuous; diligent.
Serious; weighty; of a serious, weighty, or important nature; important.

Examples of "earnest" in Sentences

But— She lifted on her elbow, her expression earnest.
And if you are in earnest, is there nothing you have to do besides praying?
She undid his shirt and placed her hand on his bare chest, her expression earnest.
Before they got out of the cab Douglass turned to him, his expression earnest at last.
He sent me one this week which, in earnest, is as pretty a thing as I have seen, a China trunk, and the finest of the kind that e'er I saw.
She leaned across the table, her expression earnest and so beautiful he could only stare, marveling at what changes time had wrought in her.
Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has issued what she calls an "earnest appeal" for the government and ethnic groups to begin immediate peace talks.
Stands to reason, if any man's going to preach earnest, _earnest_, mind you, he'll require some notes or heads jotted down, clear and easy to be got at, before him. "
"What they should be doing in earnest is forming opinions, not about me but about GM and what this company is doing that is ... hugely beneficial to the causes they so enthusiastically claim to support," he said in a posting titled, "Talk About a Crock."