0 serious and determined, especially too serious and unable to find your own actions funny:
There was even something of an anti-advertising ' ' consumer movement ' ' of considerable size beginning to form, ' ' giving many earnest souls the jitters.
He comes across as an earnest but blinkered academic.
We now begin our argument in earnest at the point of tension between realism and liberalism.
The importance of not being in earnest carries with it the sound of what must be discounted: particularly, goodness.
Her earnest attempts to explain away the authorities' "natural" reaction belie, however, the ironic, knowing quality of her writing.
Long and earnest study of the subject enabled us to become tri-lingual.
The commercialisation of the blues could now begin in earnest.
Both characters were earnest, ethical, and slid from irony to cynicism when dealing with the absurdities of existence.