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LONGING
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Prolonged unfulfilled desire or need
Synonyms:
hungriness; longing; yearning
Classified under:
Nouns denoting feelings and emotions
Hypernyms ("longing" is a kind of...):
desire (the feeling that accompanies an unsatisfied state)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "longing"):
hankering; yen (a yearning for something or to do something)
pining (a feeling of deep longing)
wishfulness (an unrealistic yearning)
wistfulness (a sadly pensive longing)
nostalgia (longing for something past)
discontent; discontentedness; discontentment (a longing for something better than the present situation)
Derivation:
long (desire strongly or persistently)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb long
Context examples:
And she looked around as if longing to tell him so.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
My dear Emma, I am longing to talk to you.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
I'm longing to, but all I know he gave me in confidence and on condition that I didn't.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Arthur was leaving the room, and Martin Eden followed his exit with longing eyes.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
I have described myself as always having been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
She began first to be sensible of this, and to sigh for her conversation, as she walked along the pump-room one morning, by Mrs. Allen's side, without anything to say or to hear; and scarcely had she felt a five minutes' longing of friendship, before the object of it appeared, and inviting her to a secret conference, led the way to a seat.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
“You are afraid of him now. You are afraid of me. You cannot deny it. If I should catch you by the throat, thus,”—his hand was about my throat and my breath was shut off,—“and began to press the life out of you thus, and thus, your instinct of immortality will go glimmering, and your instinct of life, which is longing for life, will flutter up, and you will struggle to save yourself.”
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
The sight of the trees so near at hand had almost made me sick with longing, but the current had soon carried me past the point, and as the next reach of sea opened out, I beheld a sight that changed the nature of my thoughts.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
They talked of his sister, his friends, his house, his fruit—of everything but himself; yet Elizabeth was longing to know what Mrs. Gardiner thought of him, and Mrs. Gardiner would have been highly gratified by her niece's beginning the subject.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
I was going for a drive and longing for company.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
