seeming
- 1Apparent to the eye or mind, as distinct from and often opposed to what is real or actual.
Her seeming confidence hid a deep and constant nervousness.
Despite his seeming calm, he was terrified the whole time.
Similarapparent, ostensible
Oppositereal, actual, genuine, true
Note
It lives mostly in front of a noun: seeming friendship, seeming sorrow, seeming calm. The word often carries a quiet suspicion. Aphra Behn's The Amorous Prince (1671) hides anger "in a seeming calm" to mask vengeance. Yet Goldsmith's "seeming difficulties" (1765) are simply obstacles that look harder than they are. Like apparent and ostensible, it sets appearance against reality, and context decides whether the appearance is a mask or a misjudgment.
- 2Present participle of seem.
Seeming unaware of the danger, the hikers pressed on.
The deal kept seeming better the more they discussed it.
Note
A linking verb in participle form: what follows seeming describes the subject rather than acting on an object, as in seeming unaware, seeming better, seeming to hesitate. The same spelling also serves as the adjective of false appearances and as a noun. Position tells them apart: before a noun it is usually the adjective, while after a verb such as keep, or at the head of a clause, it is the participle.
- 3The outward look or appearance that something or someone presents.
Beneath the calm seeming of the village lay real bitterness and feuding.
He judged her only by outward seeming, never by what she actually did.
Similarappearance, semblance, facade, surface, guise
Note
A noun with a long literary life. Shakespeare's Sonnet 102 (1609) speaks of love grown "more weake in seeming," and Poe's raven has eyes with "all the seeming of a demon's." Most often it is uncountable, as in in seeming or outward seeming. The plural is rarer and more pointed: Iris Murdoch's An Accidental Man (1971) has people "condemned to seemings," with appearance treated as the whole human condition.
Less common meaning
- 4A person's perception or judgment of a matter; one's opinion.
Nothing more cleare vnto their seeming, then that a new Jerusalem being often spoken of in Scripture, they vndoubtedly were themselues that newe Ierusalem,
1604, Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall PolitieNote
Here the word turns inward. Where the outward-appearance noun names how a thing looks, this sense names how it looks to someone. It nearly always takes a possessive after to or unto, as in Milton's "to her seeming" and Hooker's "unto their seeming," and means "in her judgment." Because it is obsolete, any modern use reads as deliberate archaism, and to my seeming is the form readers will most easily recognize.
Showing meanings only.
seeming is a form of seem
seem, verb: To give the outward impression of being something; to appear to be a certain way. Full entry
- Spelling
- seem → seeming: add -ing
Use it in a sentence
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Origin
Formed from the verb "seem" combined with the suffix "-ing".