| Library / English Dictionary |
URGING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The act of earnestly supporting or encouraging
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("urging" is a kind of...):
advocacy; protagonism (active support of an idea or cause etc.; especially the act of pleading or arguing for something)
Derivation:
urge (spur on or encourage especially by cheers and shouts)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Insistent solicitation and entreaty
Example:
his importunity left me no alternative but to agree
Synonyms:
importunity; urgency; urging
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("urging" is a kind of...):
solicitation (an entreaty addressed to someone of superior status)
Sense 3
Meaning:
A verbalization that encourages you to attempt something
Example:
the ceaseless prodding got on his nerves
Synonyms:
goad; goading; prod; prodding; spur; spurring; urging
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("urging" is a kind of...):
encouragement (the expression of approval and support)
Derivation:
urge (force or impel in an indicated direction)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb urge
Context examples:
Just in front of the travellers a horseman was urging his steed up the slope, driving it on with whip and spur as one who rides for a set purpose.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
She had been extremely surprized, never more so, than when Emma first opened the affair to her; but she saw in it only increase of happiness to all, and had no scruple in urging him to the utmost.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
To be urging her opinion against Sir Thomas's was a proof of the extremity of the case; but such was her horror at the first suggestion, that she could actually look him in the face and say that she hoped it might be settled otherwise; in vain, however: Sir Thomas smiled, tried to encourage her, and then looked too serious, and said too decidedly, It must be so, my dear, for her to hazard another word; and she found herself the next moment conducted by Mr. Crawford to the top of the room, and standing there to be joined by the rest of the dancers, couple after couple, as they were formed.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Elinor was very earnest in her application to her mother, relating all that had passed, her suspicions of Willoughby's inconstancy, urging her by every plea of duty and affection to demand from Marianne an account of her real situation with respect to him.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
I was swept away, but not unkindly, to some distance, where the people around me made me stay; urging, as I confusedly perceived, that he was bent on going, with help or without, and that I should endanger the precautions for his safety by troubling those with whom they rested.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Two russet-clad varlets, with loud halloo and cracking whips, walked thigh-deep amid the swarm, guiding, controlling, and urging.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
While she was gone Mr. Rushworth arrived, escorting his mother, who came to be civil and to shew her civility especially, in urging the execution of the plan for visiting Sotherton, which had been started a fortnight before, and which, in consequence of her subsequent absence from home, had since lain dormant.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Still Mrs. Norris was at intervals urging something different; and in the most interesting moment of his passage to England, when the alarm of a French privateer was at the height, she burst through his recital with the proposal of soup.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
A massive and lethargic woman, who had been urging Daisy to play golf with her at the local club tomorrow, spoke in Miss Baedeker's defence: "Oh, she's all right now. When she's had five or six cocktails she always starts screaming like that. I tell her she ought to leave it alone."
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
