Library / English Dictionary

WISHING

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

A specific feeling of desire

Example:

he was above all wishing and desire

Synonyms:

want; wish; wishing

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Hypernyms ("wishing" is a kind of...):

desire (the feeling that accompanies an unsatisfied state)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "wishing"):

velleity (a mere wish, unaccompanied by effort to obtain)

Derivation:

wish (hope for; have a wish)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

-ing form of the verb wish

Credits

 Context examples: 

"Yes, sir," Martin said humbly, wishing somehow that the man at the desk in the library was in Professor Hilton's place just then.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I am like a sober man looking upon drunken men, and, greatly weary, wishing he, too, were drunk.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

"Pardon me," I said, with equal politeness, "but I have a special reason for wishing to know who purchased it."

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Because, my dear Watson, I had the strongest possible reason for wishing certain people to think that I was there when I was really elsewhere.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I came softly away from my place of observation, and avoiding that part of the neighbourhood, and wishing I had not gone near it, strolled about until it was ten o'clock.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

They began their walk, and Mrs. Morland was not entirely mistaken in his object in wishing it.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

“I have a most particular and weighty reason for wishing to go,” said the sturdy knight.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Emphasis on multi-site, cooperative research by multi- disciplinary teams of investigators wishing to collaborate within the common theme of the genetic epidemiology of cancer.

(Interdisciplinary Studies in the Genetic Epidemiology of Cancer, NCI Thesaurus)

One day, about the time of our Cliffe Royal adventure, I was seated in the cottage looking round at the curios which my father had fastened on to the walls, and wishing, like the lazy lad that I was, that Mr. Lilly had died before ever he wrote his Latin grammar, when my mother, who was sitting knitting in the window, gave a little cry of surprise.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)