PONDERING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does pondering mean? 

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

1. deeply or seriously thoughtful

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• PONDERING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Deeply or seriously thoughtful

Synonyms:

brooding; broody; contemplative; meditative; musing; pensive; pondering; reflective; ruminative

Context example:

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

Similar:

thoughtful (exhibiting or characterized by careful thought)

 Context examples 

Pondering over these heart-rending tidings, Catherine walked slowly upstairs.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

He shook his head slowly, pondering.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

They sat in silence for a long time, she thinking desperately and he pondering upon his love which had departed.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

He seemed to find an immense fund of reflection in this circumstance, and sat pondering and inwardly whistling for some time.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

But Jo had made up her mind, and after pondering over a project for some days, she confided it to her mother.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I filled the interval in walking softly about my room, and pondering the visitation which had given my plans their present bent.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

For an hour I sat pondering over it in the gloom, until at last a weeping maid brought in a lamp, and close at her heels came my friend Trevor, pale but composed, with these very papers which lie upon my knee held in his grasp.

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

Harriet had not been at home; but a note had been prepared and left for her, written in the very style to touch; a small mixture of reproach, with a great deal of kindness; and till Mr. Elton himself appeared, she had been much occupied by it, continually pondering over what could be done in return, and wishing to do more than she dared to confess.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

In his slow and pondering way, Skiff Miller looked at him, then asked, with a nod of his head toward Madge: How d'you know she's your wife? You just say, 'Because she is,' and I'll say it's mere assertion.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

One of whom, having never before understood that Thornton was so soon and so completely to be his home, was pondering with downcast eyes on what it would be not to see Edmund every day; and the other, startled from the agreeable fancies she had been previously indulging on the strength of her brother's description, no longer able, in the picture she had been forming of a future Thornton, to shut out the church, sink the clergyman, and see only the respectable, elegant, modernised, and occasional residence of a man of independent fortune, was considering Sir Thomas, with decided ill-will, as the destroyer of all this, and suffering the more from that involuntary forbearance which his character and manner commanded, and from not daring to relieve herself by a single attempt at throwing ridicule on his cause.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)