brood

(bro͞od)

1. The young of certain animals, especially a group of young birds hatched at one time and cared for together.

2. The children in one family.

v. brood·ed, brood·ing, broods

v.intr.

a. To focus the attention on a subject persistently and moodily; worry: brooded about his future; brooded over the insult for several days.

b. To be depressed: All he seemed to do was sit and brood.

a. To sit on or hatch eggs.

b. To protect developing eggs or young.

3. To hover envelopingly; hang: Mist brooded over the moor.

v.tr.

1. To think about (something) persistently or moodily: brooded that her work might come to nothing.

a. To sit on or hatch (eggs).

b. To protect (developing eggs or young).

adj.

Kept for breeding: a brood hen.

[Middle English, from Old English brōd; see bhreu- in Indo-European roots.]

brood′ing·ly adv.

Synonyms: brood, dwell, fret¹, mope, worry
These verbs mean to turn something over in the mind moodily and at length: brooding about his decline in popularity; dwelled on her defeat; fretted over the loss of his job; moping about his illness; worrying about the unpaid bills.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun	1.	brooding - sitting on eggs so as to hatch them by the warmth of the body incubation birthing, giving birth, parturition, birth - the process of giving birth
	2.	brooding - persistent morbid meditation on a problem pensiveness melancholy - a feeling of thoughtful sadness
Adj.	1.	brooding - deeply or seriously thoughtful; "Byron lives on not only in his poetry, but also in his creation of the 'Byronic hero' - the persona of a brooding melancholy young man"; contemplative, meditative, musing, pensive, pondering, reflective, ruminative, broody thoughtful - exhibiting or characterized by careful thought; "a thoughtful paper"

brooding

adjective gloomy, troubled, depressed, moody, glum, dejected, despondent, downcast, morose A heavy, brooding silence descended on them.

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

Translations

brooding

[ˈbruːdɪŋ] ADJ [evil, presence etc] → siniestro, amenazador

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

brooding

[ˈbruːdɪŋ] (literary) adj

(= ominous) [silence, atmosphere] → troublant(e)

(= thoughtful) [eyes, look] → soucieux/euse

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

Roscoe Sherriff was prowling about the house, brooding on campaigns of publicity.

There was a brooding expression in his deep-set eyes.

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Helen replied that she had no intention of brooding on such a dull subject.

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"So as not to wake me," replied the Writer of Fables, a holy calm brooding upon his beautiful face.

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He ate and drank, for he was exhausted - but he little knew or cared what; and he wandered about in the chill rain, thinking and thinking, and brooding and brooding.

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Brooding over all these matters, the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some irregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to win the master-word that should control this new and incomprehensible intelligence.

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He was brooding over these, preparatory to opening them, at the very moment when Adolf addressed him.

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And she had misgivings and fears which she dared not acknowledge to herself, though she was always secretly brooding over them.

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The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding mo- tionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.

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In all the earlier years when her babies were young, carking cares and anxieties darkened the fireside with their brooding wings.

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He had seen men before with the jungle madness upon them--the madness of solitude and unrestrained brooding, and perhaps a touch of fever.

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For all Jerry might have known, though he pondered it not, Malaita was a universe, beheaded and resting on the knees of some brooding lesser god, himself vastly mightier than Bashti whose knees bore the brooding weight of Skipper's sun-dried, smoke-cured head, this lesser god vexed and questing, feeling and guessing at the dual twin-mysteries of time and space and of motion and matter, above, beneath, around, and beyond him.

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