longing
Americannoun
-
longings
plural
-
strong, persistent desire or craving, especially for something unattainable or distant.
filled with longing for home.
- Synonyms:
- aspiration
- Antonyms:
- apathy
-
an instance of this.
a sudden longing to see old friends.
adjective
noun
adjective
Synonym Usage
See desire.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of longing
First recorded before 1000; Middle English; Old English langung; equivalent to long 2 + -ing 1
Explanation
A longing is a strong feeling of need or desire for someone or something. If you're stuck in detention and all of your friends are outside enjoying a sunny day, you might be looking out the window with longing. A longing describes an unfulfilled desire. The days might feel long as long as you are longing to see someone you love, if that person is far away. You might be longing for your mother's home-made chicken soup, if you are sick and far from home. Or perhaps you are a pregnant woman, wide awake and longing for pickles and ice-cream at four in the morning. Let's hope there's a twenty-four hour deli open somewhere to help satisfy your longing.
Vocabulary lists containing longing
Beowulf vocabulary
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Copper Sun
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Out of the Dust
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The title song pictures him encountering her, and longing for her, in grade school.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 24, 2026
The Queen says she was "longing" to share her experience while launching a cancer support centre just days after learning of her husband's diagnosis, according to the Daily Express.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
As a form of media, mail-order catalogs themselves were a story of longing and aspiration that came to define shopping as an American way of life.
From Salon ● Jul. 18, 2026
The song that touched her was Spring Day, a haunting yet hopeful 2017 release about separation and longing.
From BBC ● Jul. 17, 2026
He was longing for sleep himself, but first he had to make room for him and Wolf and waken Renn.
From "Wolf Brother" by Michelle Paver
He has no apparent convictions, only Freudian longings for an idealized childhood.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 8, 2026
His voice - bruised, buttery and intimate - has been an inescapable undercurrent of Bollywood, narrating heartbreaks, longings and reconciliations for millions for more than a decade.
From BBC ● Jan. 28, 2026
But if there were any chance of changing my mind and taking the plunge, watching “Welcome to Derry” has permanently exorcised any phantom longings.
From Salon ● Nov. 9, 2025
Can he deny his flesh and blood longings and his yearning for relief from an enduring sorrow?
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 23, 2024
The hubristic longings of a child seminarian were to carry Europe out of the cloister of medieval thought.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
