"eager beaver" meaning in English

See eager beaver in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

IPA: /ˌiː.ɡə ˈbiː.və/ [UK], /ˌi.ɡɚ ˈbi.vɚ/ [US] Audio: en-us-eager beaver.ogg [US], en-au-eager beaver.ogg [Australia] Forms: eager beavers [plural]
Etymology: * Head templates: {{en-noun}} eager beaver (plural eager beavers)
  1. (idiomatic, colloquial) One (especially a child) who is very excited or enthusiastic to begin a task; a person who is exceedingly assiduous in an enthusiastic manner Tags: colloquial, idiomatic Categories (topical): People, Personality Related terms: eager, beaver away

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for eager beaver meaning in English (3.4kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "*",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "eager beavers",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "eager beaver (plural eager beavers)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with language name categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "People",
          "orig": "en:People",
          "parents": [
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Personality",
          "orig": "en:Personality",
          "parents": [
            "Mind",
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1988 November 21, Diana Muldaur, Brent Spiner, The Child (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Paramount Domestic Television, →OCLC",
          "text": "PULASKI: I am unfamiliar with this symbol.\nDATA: It indicates a genetically engineered biological life-form.\nPULASKI: About twenty percent of the specimens fall into that category. Some eager beaver at play.\nDATA: Query: \"eager beaver?\"\nPULASKI: Well in this case, eager beaver refers to some over achieving genetic engineer, who probably because of lack of anything better to do has forced this strain of virus to mutate, just so he can see how bad bad can get.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007, Bernadette Hlubik Schell, The Internet and Society, ABC-CLIO, page 178",
          "text": "An “eager beaver” in terms of computing, Gates apparently started programming at age eleven.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "One (especially a child) who is very excited or enthusiastic to begin a task; a person who is exceedingly assiduous in an enthusiastic manner"
      ],
      "id": "en-eager_beaver-en-noun-W027nNYj",
      "links": [
        [
          "excited",
          "excited"
        ],
        [
          "enthusiastic",
          "enthusiastic"
        ],
        [
          "task",
          "task"
        ],
        [
          "assiduous",
          "assiduous"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, colloquial) One (especially a child) who is very excited or enthusiastic to begin a task; a person who is exceedingly assiduous in an enthusiastic manner"
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "eager"
        },
        {
          "word": "beaver away"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˌiː.ɡə ˈbiː.və/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˌi.ɡɚ ˈbi.vɚ/",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-us-eager beaver.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/57/En-us-eager_beaver.ogg/En-us-eager_beaver.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/En-us-eager_beaver.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (US)"
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-au-eager beaver.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/9d/En-au-eager_beaver.ogg/En-au-eager_beaver.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/En-au-eager_beaver.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "eager beaver"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "*",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "eager beavers",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "eager beaver (plural eager beavers)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "eager"
    },
    {
      "word": "beaver away"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English colloquialisms",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English rhyming phrases",
        "English terms with IPA pronunciation",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "en:People",
        "en:Personality"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1988 November 21, Diana Muldaur, Brent Spiner, The Child (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Paramount Domestic Television, →OCLC",
          "text": "PULASKI: I am unfamiliar with this symbol.\nDATA: It indicates a genetically engineered biological life-form.\nPULASKI: About twenty percent of the specimens fall into that category. Some eager beaver at play.\nDATA: Query: \"eager beaver?\"\nPULASKI: Well in this case, eager beaver refers to some over achieving genetic engineer, who probably because of lack of anything better to do has forced this strain of virus to mutate, just so he can see how bad bad can get.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007, Bernadette Hlubik Schell, The Internet and Society, ABC-CLIO, page 178",
          "text": "An “eager beaver” in terms of computing, Gates apparently started programming at age eleven.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "One (especially a child) who is very excited or enthusiastic to begin a task; a person who is exceedingly assiduous in an enthusiastic manner"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "excited",
          "excited"
        ],
        [
          "enthusiastic",
          "enthusiastic"
        ],
        [
          "task",
          "task"
        ],
        [
          "assiduous",
          "assiduous"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, colloquial) One (especially a child) who is very excited or enthusiastic to begin a task; a person who is exceedingly assiduous in an enthusiastic manner"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˌiː.ɡə ˈbiː.və/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˌi.ɡɚ ˈbi.vɚ/",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-us-eager beaver.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/5/57/En-us-eager_beaver.ogg/En-us-eager_beaver.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/En-us-eager_beaver.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (US)"
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-au-eager beaver.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/9d/En-au-eager_beaver.ogg/En-au-eager_beaver.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/En-au-eager_beaver.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "eager beaver"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-22 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (fc4f0c7 and c937495). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.