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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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 only way through this marital disconnect and fear of and longing for retirement is through the figures.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 13, 2026
The longing is what makes life beautiful and also impossible.
From Salon ● Oct. 12, 2026
"The relief on his face was very obvious, and he said, send a message to everybody, send them my love, tell them I love them and tell them I'm longing to see them."
From BBC ● Sep. 29, 2026
“It’s to children’s fiction that you turn if you want to feel awe and hunger and longing for justice,” she writes, “to make the old warhorse heart stamp again in its stall.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 26, 2026
Except a lot of longing on my part.
From "Legendary Frybread Drive-In" by Cynthia Leitich Smith
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
The setting is still a Swiss alpine hamlet, but the villagers are all members of some puritanical sect and its sleepwalking heroine, Amina, has longings that transcend its limits.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2025
One of our most fundamental longings as social beings is to belong, especially to a community.
From Salon ● Aug. 27, 2024
Michael, the default English department heartthrob who satisfies his artistic longings by publishing book-long cantos, isn’t fated for such greatness.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 24, 2024
Rain caused one to reflect on the shadowed, more poignant parts of life—the inescapable sorrows, the speechless longings, the disappointments, the regrets, the cold miseries.
From "Abel's Island" by William Steig
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
