RECLINING

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does reclining mean? 

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

1. the act of assuming or maintaining a reclining position

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• RECLINING (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The act of assuming or maintaining a reclining position

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

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

motility; motion; move; movement (a change of position that does not entail a change of location)

Derivation:

recline (lean in a comfortable resting position)

recline (move the upper body backwards and down)

 Context examples 

Lying down or reclining with the left side in a downward direction.

(Left Lateral Decubitus Position, NCI Thesaurus)

A disorder characterized by episodes of respiratory distress, usually occurring after several hours of sleep in a reclining position.

(Dyspnea Paroxysmal Nocturnal, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)

I was reclining in a cane-backed chair at the moment, and my protruded feet had attracted his ever-active attention.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Lying down or reclining with one side of the body in a downward direction.

(Lateral Decubitus Position, NCI Thesaurus)

Lady Brackenstall was reclining on the same couch, but looked brighter than before.

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

There was undoubtedly something, long and black, bending over the half-reclining white figure.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

She threw open a door as she spoke, and there, in a reclining chair at the further end of the room, we caught a glimpse of a figure all lumped together, huge and shapeless, with tails of black hair hanging down.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

His emotion on entering the room, in seeing her altered looks, and in receiving the pale hand which she immediately held out to him, was such, as, in Elinor's conjecture, must arise from something more than his affection for Marianne, or the consciousness of its being known to others; and she soon discovered in his melancholy eye and varying complexion as he looked at her sister, the probable recurrence of many past scenes of misery to his mind, brought back by that resemblance between Marianne and Eliza already acknowledged, and now strengthened by the hollow eye, the sickly skin, the posture of reclining weakness, and the warm acknowledgment of peculiar obligation.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

I thought of him very much after I went to bed, and raised myself, I recollect, to look at him where he lay in the moonlight, with his handsome face turned up, and his head reclining easily on his arm.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Trusses of straw had been thrown down along the walls, and reclining on them were some twenty or thirty archers, all of the Company, their steel caps and jacks thrown off, their tunics open and their great limbs sprawling upon the clay floor.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)