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DESERVING
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
(often used ironically) worthy of being treated in a particular way
Example:
a deserving cause
Synonyms:
deserving; worth
Classified under:
Similar:
worthy (having worth or merit or value; being honorable or admirable)
Domain usage:
irony (a trope that involves incongruity between what is expected and what occurs)
Derivation:
deservingness (the quality of being deserving (e.g., deserving assistance))
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb deserve
Context examples:
Now, Watson, we will light our lamp; we will, however, take the precaution to open our window to avoid the premature decease of two deserving members of society, and you will seat yourself near that open window in an armchair unless, like a sensible man, you determine to have nothing to do with the affair.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I thought this account of the struldbrugs might be some entertainment to the reader, because it seems to be a little out of the common way; at least I do not remember to have met the like in any book of travels that has come to my hands: and if I am deceived, my excuse must be, that it is necessary for travellers who describe the same country, very often to agree in dwelling on the same particulars, without deserving the censure of having borrowed or transcribed from those who wrote before them.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
I could hardly believe my own as I read the terms of the will; but he explained that he was a bachelor with hardly any living relation, that he had known my parents in his youth, and that he had always heard of me as a very deserving young man, and was assured that his money would be in worthy hands.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I delighted him by saying, most heartily, that the Doctor was deserving of our best respect and highest esteem.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Why should she lose a pleasure which she has shewn herself so deserving of?
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Happy for all her maternal feelings was the day on which Mrs. Bennet got rid of her two most deserving daughters.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
Clerval! Beloved friend! Even now it delights me to record your words and to dwell on the praise of which you are so eminently deserving.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
They were so deserving, that a little higher should have been enough: but as it was, how could she have done otherwise?
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
She was as much convinced of his meaning to gain Anne in time as of his deserving her, and was beginning to calculate the number of weeks which would free him from all the remaining restraints of widowhood, and leave him at liberty to exert his most open powers of pleasing.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
I have heard, said he, with great compassion, of the injustice your friend Mr. Ferrars has suffered from his family; for if I understand the matter right, he has been entirely cast off by them for persevering in his engagement with a very deserving young woman.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
