BROODING • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Brooding

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/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."

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Etymology of 'Brooding'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Brooding" Quotes from Famous Books

... head. This was called the ger's helmet, and it was a terror to all living to behold it. Regin had the sword called Refil. With it he fled. But Fafner went to Gnita-heath (the glittering heath), where he made himself a bed, took on him the likeness of a serpent (dragon), and lay brooding over the gold. ...

— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre

... it. For Jamie's nature, like that of spiny plants, was sensitive, delicate within, as his outer side was bent and rough; and he fancied it, first, a selfishness; then, as his lonely fancy got to brooding on it, an actual sin. James Bowdoin's unlucky laugh had taught him how it seemed to others; and was not inordinate affection, to the manifest injury of the object loved, a sin? Jamie felt it so; and he had the Prayer Book's ...

— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... later he was stooping to kiss an infant presented to him on a cushion of cramoisi velvet. His happiness was crowned at last, and life spread before him a prospect of many such years. But tragedy was already brooding over this scene of pleasure, although none, least of all the King, seemed to see the ...

— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... towards her father as she felt in her younger years. There was something dead in her life, and her duty was to try and fill the void. Catherine recognised this duty to the utmost; she had a great disapproval of brooding and moping. She had, of course, no faculty for quenching memory in dissipation; but she mingled freely in the usual gaieties of the town, and she became at last an inevitable figure at all respectable entertainments. She was greatly liked, and as time went on she grew to be a sort of kindly ...

— Washington Square • Henry James

... influence, and risen in the world in defiance of her power. To explain the danger which now awaited them, we must return to their old family enemy, Sir Robert Percy. Master of Percy-hall, and of all that wealth could give, he could not enjoy his prosperity, but was continually brooding on plans of avarice ...

— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

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