Definition of earnestness:

part of speech: noun

Seriousness; serious event; not a feigned appearance; in earnest, not in jest; really intent on.

Usage examples:

• She confronted him sadly, but with an earnestness he could not but respect. in "".

• Sometimes he even smiled tenderly over it, as a memory of his wife's earnestness brushed across his vision. Mary Helen Fee in "The Locusts' Years".

• But how possible it is, without any real faith, to address to Heaven the mere clamours of our alarm, and to mistake natural agitation for earnestness in prayer, we learn by the reproaches with which, after thus crying to the Lord, they assailed His servant. G. A. Chadwick in "The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Exodus".