desiring

Pluraldesirings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of desire.

   Desiring recognition, he worked late into nearly every night.

   The committee, desiring consensus, postponed the vote until spring.

   Note

   The -ing form drops the final e of desire, and it shares its spelling with the noun for a yearning. As a participle it takes a direct object with no preposition: desiring recognition, not desiring for recognition. It carries every sense of the verb, including entreating someone and missing what is gone. In some prose, then, desiring may mean pleading or regretting rather than simply wanting.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A yearning for something; a want.

   The poem captures a restless desiring that no possession can quiet.

   Her desiring of approval drove every decision she made at work.

   Similarlonging, yearning, craving, hunger, want

   Oppositeaversion, indifference

   Note

   A noun that keeps the motion of the verb: where desire names the want, desiring names the wanting still under way. It has a lyric ring, and Frederic Henry Hedge's "Easter Hymn" rhymes it with "aspiring" to ask whether the dead have consummated "all his desiring." It can also be counted, with the plural desirings, and it takes of before its object: a desiring of approval.

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