meaningとは

語源 1

From Middle English mening, menyng, equivalent to mean +‎ -ing. Cognate with Scots mening (“intent, purpose, sense, meaning”), West Frisian miening (“opinion, mind”), Dutch mening (“view, opinion, judgement”), German Meinung (“opinion, view, mind, idea”), Danish and Swedish mening (“meaning, sense, sentence, opinion”), Icelandic meining (“meaning”).

名詞

meaning (複数形 meanings)

1. The symbolic value of something.
   • 1907, Robert William Chambers, chapter VIII, in The Younger Set (Project Gutenberg; EBook #14852), New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, published 1 February 2005 (Project Gutenberg version), OCLC 24962326:

     Elbows almost touching they leaned at ease, idly reading the almost obliterated lines engraved there. ¶ "I never understood it," she observed, lightly scornful. "What occult meaning has a sun-dial for the spooney? I'm sure I don't want to read riddles in a strange gentleman's optics."

2. The significance of a thing.

   the meaning of life

3. (semantics) The objects or concept that a word or phrase denotes, or that which a sentence says.
4. (obsolete) Intention.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Sir Walter Raleigh:

     It was their meaning to take what they needed by stronghand.

   • 1859, Charles Dickens, The Haunted House

     […] there was nothing in the house, what there was, was broken, the last people must have lived like pigs, what could the meaning of the landlord be?

同意語

• (significance): sense
• (symbolic concept): definition (semantics)

下位語

• proposition

派生語

語源 2

From mean +‎ -ing.

動詞

meaning

1. present participle of mean
   • 2013 July-August, Lee S. Langston, “The Adaptable Gas Turbine”, in American Scientist:

     Turbines have been around for a long time—windmills and water wheels are early examples. The name comes from the Latin turbo, meaning vortex, and thus the defining property of a turbine is that a fluid or gas turns the blades of a rotor, which is attached to a shaft that can perform useful work.

形容詞

meaning (comparative more meaning, superlative most meaning)

1. Having a (specified) intention.
2. Expressing some intention or significance; meaningful.
   • 1839, Edgar Allan Poe, ‘William Wilson’:

     I might, to-day, have been a better, and thus a happier man, had I less frequently rejected the counsels embodied in those meaning whispers which I then but too cordially hated and too bitterly despised.

   • 1978, Jane Gardam, God on the Rocks, Abacus 2014, p. 160:

     [T]he new friends […] knew nothing and did not particularly care to hear about the beautiful mother with her long, meaning looks and liquid dresses and distant smile.

アナグラム

• amening