WISHING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does wishing mean? 

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

1. a specific feeling of desire

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• WISHING (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A specific feeling of desire

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

want; wish; wishing

Context example:

he was above all wishing and desire

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

desire (the feeling that accompanies an unsatisfied state)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "wishing"):

velleity (a mere wish, unaccompanied by effort to obtain)

Derivation:

wish (hope for; have a wish)

 Context examples 

He was wishing to confide in her—perhaps to consult her;—cost her what it would, she would listen.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Miss Anne, I cannot help wishing Mrs Charles had a little of your method with those children.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

"I am NOT going to write to my mother," replied Marianne, hastily, and as if wishing to avoid any farther inquiry.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

I'm very sorry I was so cross, but I can't help wishing you'd bear it better, Teddy, dear.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I knew you would be wishing me joy.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

She was talking of you only this morning, and wishing you would come, but she is sleeping now, or was ten minutes ago, when I was up at the house.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

And Sir Thomas's wishing just at first to be only with his family, is so very natural, that she can argue nothing from that.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I was four hours under these circumstances, expecting, and indeed wishing, every moment to be my last.

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

The cook, however, thought to himself: “If the child has the power of wishing, and I am here, he might very easily get me into trouble.”

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

For some days I haunted the spot where these scenes had taken place, sometimes wishing to see you, sometimes resolved to quit the world and its miseries for ever.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)