BROODING • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Brooding

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/brˈudɪŋ/ Listen

adjective

brooding adj.

Worried and thinking long and intensely, especially about a particular problem.

Synonyms: broody, contemplative, meditative, musing, pensive, pondering, reflective, ruminative, gloomy, morose.

brooding adj. Good at incubating eggs, especially of a fowl kept for that purpose; as, a brooding hen.

Synonyms: brood, hatching.

noun

brooding n. The process of sitting on eggs so as to hatch them by the warmth of the body; mostly used of birds.

Synonyms: incubation.

verb

Brood v. t.

To sit over, cover, and cherish; as, a hen broods her chickens.

To cherish with care. (R.)

To think anxiously or moodily upon. "You'll sit and brood your sorrows on a throne."

Brood v. i. (past & past part. brooded; pres. part. brooding)

To sit on and cover eggs, as a fowl, for the purpose of warming them and hatching the young; or to sit over and cover young, as a hen her chickens, in order to warm and protect them; hence, to sit quietly, as if brooding. "Birds of calm sir brooding on the charmed wave."

To have the mind dwell continuously or moodily on a subject; to think long and anxiously; to be in a state of gloomy, serious thought; usually followed by over or on; as, to brood over misfortunes. "Brooding on unprofitable gold." "Brooding over all these matters, the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit." "When with downcast eyes we muse and brood."

See images of 'Brooding'

Etymology of 'Brooding'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Brooding" Quotes from Famous Books

... And Miss Strange, brooding over these instances, would have said the same, but for Miss Driscoll's absolute serenity of demeanour and complete abandonment to love. These seemed incompatible with guilt; these, whatever the appearances, proclaimed innocence—an innocence she was here to prove if fortune favoured and the ...

— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... of his two friends had a depressing effect upon old Mr. Shimerda. When he was out hunting, he used to go into the empty log house and sit there, brooding. This cabin was his hermitage until the winter snows penned him in his cave. For Antonia and me, the story of the wedding party was never at an end. We did not tell Pavel's secret to anyone, but guarded it jealously—as if the wolves of the Ukraine had gathered ...

— My Antonia • Willa Cather

... that the spinster was held in reverent awe of her employer, for she guarded a judicious silence, as with a formal bow she at last left the table at the graciously permitting nod of Hugh Johnstone. There was a cold and brooding restraint, which had seemed to cast a chill even over the sultry Indian midday, but Justine's smile was bright and winning as she faintly acknowledged with a blushing cheek Major Hawke's gallantry as he sprang up and opened ...

— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... will be all right soon." But she does not get "all right." She grows worse day by day, till all at once she realizes that a distressing female complaint is established. Her doctor has made a mistake. She has lost faith in him; hope vanishes; then comes the brooding, morbid, melancholy, everlasting BLUES. Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound instantly asserts its curative powers in all those peculiar ailments of women, and the story recited above is the true experience of hundreds ...

— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham

... City and the hopes it held: With smoke and brooding vapors intercurled, As the thick roofs and walls close-paralleled Shut out the fair horizons of the ...

— Poems • Alan Seeger

More quotes...