seeming

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Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈsiːmɪŋ/

Verb

1. present participle of seem#English|seem

Adjective

seeming

1. Appearing to the eye or mind (distinguished from, and often opposed to, real or actual).

   Synonyms: apparent, ostensible

   seeming friendship

   • circa 1597 William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2, Act V, Scene 2,

     O, good my lord, you have lost a friend

     And I dare swear you borrow not that face

     Of seeming sorrow—it is sure your own.

   • 1671, Aphra Behn, The Amorous Prince, or, The Curious Husband, London: Thomas Dring, Act II, Scene 5, pp. 32-33,

     I'le hide my anger in a seeming calm,

     And what I have to do, consult the while,

     And mask my vengeance underneath a smile.

   • 1765, Oliver Goldsmith, Essays, London: W. Griffin, Essay 18, p. 150,

     Of all the English philosophers, I most reverence Francis Bacon, that great and hardy genius: he it is who, undaunted by the seeming difficulties that oppose, prompts human curiosity to examine every part of nature;

   • 1876, George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, Chapter 27,

     […] she was overcome like the thirsty one who is drawn toward the seeming water in the desert […]

   • 1955, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012, Chapter 10,

     […] though they marched in seeming peace, the hearts of all the army, from the highest to the lowest, were downcast, and with every mile that they went north foreboding of evil grew heavier on them.

Translations

• Portuguese: aparente
• Russian: ка́жущийся

Noun

seeming (plural seemings)

1. Outward appearance.
   • 1609, William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's sonnets 102,

     My loue is strengthned though more weake in seeming

     I loue not lesse, thogh lesse the show appeare,

   • 1845, Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven"

     And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

     On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

     And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,

     And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor

   • 1971, Iris Murdoch, An Accidental Man, New York: Viking, p. 162,

     I am not what I seemed to her, he thought, and doubtless she is not what she seemed to me, but it is our lot to be irrevocably condemned to seemings and to deserve them too.

2. (obsolete) Apprehension; judgement.
   • 1604, Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, London, Preface, p. 39,

     Nothing more cleare vnto their seeming, then that a new Jerusalem being often spoken of in Scripture, they vndoubtedly were themselues that newe Ierusalem,

   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 8, lines 736-738,

     […] in her ears the sound

     Yet rung of his perswasive words, impregn’d

     With Reason, to her seeming, and with Truth;

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