BEGGING

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does begging mean? 

• BEGGING (noun)
  The noun BEGGING has 1 sense:

1. a solicitation for money or food (especially in the street by an apparently penniless person)

  Familiarity information: BEGGING used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BEGGING (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A solicitation for money or food (especially in the street by an apparently penniless person)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

beggary; begging; mendicancy

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

solicitation (an entreaty addressed to someone of superior status)

 Context examples 

“Why, where does he go a-begging?”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

In some way the magnificent offers certain magazines had made him leaked out, and Oakland ministers called upon him in a friendly way, while professional begging letters began to clutter his mail.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

He said he'd just got a letter begging him to come home, for Frank was very ill.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I begged a fortnight’s grace from the creditor, asked for a holiday from my employers, and spent the time in begging in the City under my disguise.

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

I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Had he been in his right senses, he could not have thought of such a thing as begging you to give away half your fortune from your own child.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

As for Ben Gunn, he got a thousand pounds, which he spent or lost in three weeks, or to be more exact, in nineteen days, for he was back begging on the twentieth.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

The rest of your note I know means nothing; but I am so unequal to anything of the sort, that I hope you will excuse my begging you to take no farther notice.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Indeed, begging your pardon, sir, I shall not.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Once a begging friar came limping along in a brown habit, imploring in a most dolorous voice to give him a single groat to buy bread wherewith to save himself from impending death.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)