pining

Pluralpinings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of pine.

   Years after the breakup, he was still pining for her.

   Pining for the life you left behind only makes the new one harder.

   Note

   The silent e of pine drops before -ing, as it does in most such verbs. The form usually takes for: pining for home, pining for an old love. On its own it leans toward the older sense of wasting away through grief. Only the verb of longing has this form; the tree and its wood are nouns and never pine in this way.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of pining: painful longing for someone or something, or wasting away through grief.

   Months of quiet pining for her hometown finally pushed her to move back.

   The novel is full of romantic pinings that never turn into action.

   Similarlonging, yearning, hankering

   Note

   The plural carries this noun best, suggesting repeated, drawn-out longings rather than a single ache: Ann Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest (1791) speaks of the sullen pinings of discontent. Adjectives of mood sit naturally in front of it, sullen, quiet, romantic, and it suits writing about feeling more than everyday talk.

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