Longings

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A strong emotional desire for something that may be beyond reach
2. An intense yearning for aspects of life or relationships that could provide deep satisfaction
3. A powerful feeling of wanting something deeply, often something unattainable or far away

Etymology: The plural "longings" simply counts separate bouts of the feeling, and the noun it belongs to, "longing", is an ordinary English formation: the verb "long", meaning to desire, with the ending "-ing" added to turn it into a noun. The verb itself goes back to the Old English "langian", and its roots reach into Proto-Germanic, where a word meaning "to desire, long for" was built on the sense of something stretched out in time or distance. The noun took shape in Middle English, where the form "longinge" and its variants appeared, and it was built from the Old English "langung", a noun formed from the same verb. So the sense of wanting something far away, or wanting it over a long stretch of time, was present from the start, and the word has kept that sense of reaching toward something not yet possessed.

Synonyms: desires, yearnings, cravings

Antonyms: satisfaction, contentment