thinking

• IPA^(key): /ˈθɪŋkɪŋ/

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• Hyphenation: think‧ing
• Rhymes: -ɪŋkɪŋ
• Rhymes: -ɪŋ

From Middle English thinking, thynkynge, thenkyng, equivalent to think +‎ -ing.

thinking (usually uncountable, plural thinkings)

1. Thought; gerund of think.

   What is your thinking on this subject?

   • 2013 August 3, “The machine of a new soul”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:

     But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure. Yet this is the level of organisation that does the actual thinking—and is, presumably, the seat of consciousness.

   • 2023 March 8, David Clough, “The long road that led to Beeching”, in RAIL, number 978, page 43:

     When BR "back-checked" (BR's term) the financial results of steam replacement across 49 schemes, where DMUs had been substituted on the London Midland Region, only one was now profitable. BR thinking on such substitutions referred to "betterment", not profit or loss.

From Middle English thenkinge, þinkynge, þenkynge, þenchinde, from Old English þenċende, from Proto-Germanic *þankijandz, present participle of *þankijaną (“to think”), equivalent to think +‎ -ing. Cognate with Dutch denkend (“thinking”), German denkend (“thinking”), Swedish tänkande (“thinking”).

thinking

1. present participle and gerund of think

   I'm thinking about inventing a new perpetual-motion machine.

   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter V, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     He was thinking; but the glory of the song, the swell from the great organ, the clustered lights, […] , the height and vastness of this noble fane, its antiquity and its strength—all these things seemed to have their part as causes of the thrilling emotion that accompanied his thoughts.