beaming

1. 1
   adjective

   Smiling broadly and openly, showing great happiness or joy.

   The way a sunrise floods a room with light: that's how the happiness spreads across the face.

   A beaming bride greeted guests at the entrance to the hall.

   He looked up from the letter with a beaming expression of relief.

   Similarradiant, smiling, glowing

   Oppositeglum

   Note

   A smile pictured as giving off light, the same image as in the verb form. The adjective is gradable and compares with more and most rather than -er and -est. Dickens, in Dombey and Son (1846–48), has the Captain grow "more beaming and more happy, every day." It sits naturally before a noun, as in a beaming smile or a beaming man, and after a linking verb, as in he was beaming.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of beam.

   The host stood at the door, beaming as the guests arrived.

   The satellite is beaming signals back to Earth.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every sense of the verb, so context must sort light from smiles from signals. The smiling use takes no object, as in beaming at the guests. The transmitting uses take one, as in beaming data to a phone. When the word can be graded with more or most, it has become the adjective for a happy face. When it takes an object or forms a progressive after be, it is still the verb.

   She was beaming at everyone who came through the door.

   The phone is beaming the file to the laptop by infrared.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The action of someone or something that beams: smiling broadly, or sending out light, radio, or other signals.

   The beaming from the transmitter reached ships far out at sea.

   His cheerful beaming made everyone in the room feel welcome.

   Similarsmiling, transmission

   Note

   The noun can be counted, and its plural beamings suits elevated, figurative prose. Humphry William Woolrych's Life of Sir Edward Coke (1826) speaks of "the auspicious beamings of the Reformation," with light standing for new ideas breaking through. In that use it keeps company with other words of light, such as shed forth and partial light, and holds the image of radiance rather than of a smile.

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