brooding
Americanadjective
-
preoccupied with depressing, morbid, or painful memories or thoughts.
a brooding frame of mind.
-
cast in subdued light so as to convey a somewhat threatening atmosphere.
Dusk fell on the brooding hills.
Other Word Forms
- broodingly adverb
- nonbrooding adjective
- unbrooding adjective
Etymology
Origin of brooding
First recorded in 1810–20 brooding for def. 1; 1640–50 brooding for def. 2; brood + -ing 2
Explanation
When you're dwelling on something, you're brooding about it — this can be thoughtful or morbidly obsessed. When you're brooding, you might be depressed about something you just can't stop thinking about — like the lead character in Hamlet. Brooding can also mean you're being extremely thoughtful, contemplative, meditative, musing, reflective, or ruminative — those are all good things. You have to look at the context to see if someone is brooding in a positive or negative way. This is also a word for what chickens and other egg-laying animals do: sitting on eggs to help them hatch.
Vocabulary lists containing brooding
Words to Know Before You Defrost the Bird
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Bless Me, Ultima
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Unit 1: Telling Details
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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.
"Modern birds aren't 'better' at hatching eggs. Instead, birds living today and oviraptors have a very different way of incubation or, more specifically, brooding," Yang pointed out.
From Science Daily • Mar. 19, 2026
Robert Duvall was a distinguished and prolific screen actor who lent a brooding intensity and grizzled authority to seven decades of American film-making.
From BBC • Feb. 16, 2026
“Heathcliff was brooding but she said, ‘What if he wasn’t brooding?’
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 11, 2026
While Mescal’s no stranger to playing the put-upon father in his relatively brief yet prolific career, his brooding verges on laughable.
From Salon • Nov. 30, 2025
The energy of brooding affected their father like no other weapon they could turn against him.
From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy
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.
