COMMANDING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does commanding mean? 

• COMMANDING (adjective)
  The adjective COMMANDING has 1 sense:

1. used of a height or viewpoint

  Familiarity information: COMMANDING used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• COMMANDING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Used of a height or viewpoint

Synonyms:

commanding; dominating; overlooking

Context example:

the balcony overlooking the ballroom

Similar:

high ((literal meaning) being at or having a relatively great or specific elevation or upward extension (sometimes used in combinations like 'knee-high'))

 Context examples 

While he was thus reasoning and resolving with himself, a sardral, or gentleman-usher, came from court, commanding my master to carry me immediately thither for the diversion of the queen and her ladies.

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

Please start it, Mr. Brooke, said Kate, with a commanding air, which surprised Meg, who treated the tutor with as much respect as any other gentleman.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

He was a man of about fifty, tall, portly, and imposing, with a massive, strongly marked face and a commanding figure.

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

He was, in fact, commanding destiny—subjectively.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

There was something so big and arresting and virile in the man that the clatter and shouting died gradually away before his commanding gesture and his masterful eyes.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And so, by dint of alternate coaxing and commanding, he contrived to get them all once more enclosed in their separate dormitories.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The researchers also tested the device’s combined light and drug delivery potential when they made mice that have light-sensitive VTA neurons stay on one side of a cage by commanding the implant to shine laser pulses on the cells.

(Futuristic brain probe allows for wireless control of neurons, NIH)

I had a vague sensation of being, as it were, on view, when the maid opened it; and of wavering, somehow, across a hall with a weather-glass in it, into a quiet little drawing-room on the ground-floor, commanding a neat garden.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He wanted to animate her curiosity again as to how and where he could have heard her formerly praised; wanted very much to be gratified by more solicitation; but the charm was broken: he found that the heat and animation of a public room was necessary to kindle his modest cousin's vanity; he found, at least, that it was not to be done now, by any of those attempts which he could hazard among the too-commanding claims of the others.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

He was a very handsome man, of a commanding aspect, past the bloom, but not past the vigour of life; and with his eye still directed towards her, she saw him presently address Mr. Tilney in a familiar whisper.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)