Adjacent Words

Brooding definitions

	Tweet

Webster's 1828 Dictionary

BROOD'ING,ppr. Sitting on; covering and warming; dwelling on with anxiety.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: deeply or seriously thoughtful; "Byron lives on not only in his poetry, but also in his creation of the 'Byronic hero' - the persona of a brooding melancholy young man"; [syn: brooding, broody, contemplative, meditative, musing, pensive, pondering, reflective, ruminative] n
1: sitting on eggs so as to hatch them by the warmth of the body [syn: brooding, incubation]
2: persistent morbid meditation on a problem [syn: pensiveness, brooding]

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Brood Brood (br[=o]ch), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Brooded; p. pr. & vb. n. Brooding.] 1. 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. --Milton. 2. 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. --Dryden. Brooding over all these matters, the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit. --Hawthorne. When with downcast eyes we muse and brood. --Tennyson.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

1. Brooding is used to describe an atmosphere or feeling that makes you feel anxious or slightly afraid. (LITERARY) The same heavy, brooding silence descended on them. ADJ: usu ADJ n 2. If someone's expression or appearance is brooding, they look as if they are thinking deeply and seriously about something, especially something that is making them unhappy. (LITERARY) She kissed him and gazed into his dark, brooding eyes. ADJ: usu ADJ n