- present participle of pine.
pining
Americanadjective
-
suffering with or expressing longing or yearning for someone or something.
Exposing her vulnerability and loneliness, the poet addresses her country as would a pining woman in a letter to her beloved in a distant land.
Her pining vocals on these tracks throb with the loneliness and emptiness of fresh separation.
-
failing gradually in health or vitality, especially from grief, regret, or longing.
The day after the altercation he took sick, and continued in a pining and languishing condition till his death, which soon ensued.
noun
-
pinings
plural
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of pining
First recorded in 1200–50; pin(e) 2 ( def. ) + -ing 2 ( def. ) for the adjective senses; pin(e) 2 ( def. ) + -ing 1 ( def. ) for the noun sense
Vocabulary lists containing pining
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:
“I wanted her to let Marty have his thing. Deborah wasn’t pining for Marty. She wasn’t hoping it was her at the altar. She was there to support her friend and his choice.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 4, 2026
In Lagos, Itoro is still pining for his family.
From BBC ● Aug. 3, 2026
Noah quit the Washington Post to start a politics web site, while still pining for Chaya, who worked in the Obama administration.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026
The lack of a son’s POV makes Boy Mom pining both performative and disturbingly real.
From Salon ● Jun. 4, 2026
“The one you’re pining after. The one you dressed up for that one night. The one you’re so completely in love with.”
From "From Twinkle, with Love" by Sandhya Menon
Through countless cosmos, breakups, musings and pinings, we felt we knew her – well, the characters she helped craft anyway.
From US News ● Jan. 13, 2014
I confess that I have no heart pinings for such nonconformists as Dr. Mary Walker or any other individual who believes that eccentricity, serving no purpose but to make one conspicuous, is interesting.
From A String of Amber Beads by Martha Everts Holden
The older hands laughed at their pinings, derided their complaints, and swore that they would rather die and starve there, than return home with empty purses, to be the scorn and laughing-stock of all Hispaniola.
From The Monarchs of the Main, Volume I (of 3) Or, Adventures of the Buccaneers by Walter Thornbury
His whims ye must follow, His transports though fleet, His pinings too sweet Though often comes sorrow, The thousand delights The wounds of his darts Still charm all the hearts.
From The Imaginary Invalid by Charles Heron Wall
What hearts at war with themselves! what unceasing regrets! what pinings after the past! what long and beautiful years devoted to a moral grave, by a momentary rashness, an impulse, a disappointment!
From The Pilgrims of the Rhine by Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron Lytton
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.
