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UNFOLDING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A developmental process
Example:
the flowering of antebellum culture
Synonyms:
flowering; unfolding
Classified under:
Nouns denoting natural processes
Hypernyms ("unfolding" is a kind of...):
development; evolution (a process in which something passes by degrees to a different stage (especially a more advanced or mature stage))
Derivation:
unfold (develop or come to a promising stage)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb unfold
Context examples:
Miss Clarissa, unfolding her arms for the first time, took the notes and glanced at them.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
But the lesson did not go at all for a few minutes because Mr. Bhaer caught sight of a picture on the hat, and unfolding it, said with great disgust, I wish these papers did not come in the house.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Yet such must be the impression conveyed to you by what appears to be the purport of my actions. Yet I seek not a fellow feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure; when I die, I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory. Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
It was a People's Course, the lecture on the Pyramids, and Jo rather wondered at the choice of such a subject for such an audience, but took it for granted that some great social evil would be remedied or some great want supplied by unfolding the glories of the Pharaohs to an audience whose thoughts were busy with the price of coal and flour, and whose lives were spent in trying to solve harder riddles than that of the Sphinx.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
