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Glite Dictionary
🌱 A first feeling 🥄 Mixing action 🔥 Inspiring
stirring

stirring

3 3.7
Small first signs of a feeling, idea, or action starting to grow
  • noun
  • /ˈstɜrɪŋ/
translation icon : incipiente
  • I felt stirrings aroused inside me as I witnessed a tenderness between mother and daughter.
  • early stirrings
  • first stirrings

But right now I'm feeling that kind of little stirring inside of me that need.

Examples

  • The air inside was warm and alive with the faint stirrings of resting horses.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • Inside her, I could feel vague stirrings, a kick, perhaps a body shifting in place.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • I remember the first stirrings of my own interest after a funeral in this same church years ago.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • At this, I felt the stirrings of rebellion inside me.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • Clearly, there are stirrings of a movement to reconceptualize the nation's testing agenda.

    Academic text (1990)

  • So why are some Americans finally feeling the first stirrings of that righteous rage?

    Blog text (4)

  • The coupling of these two names reminds me of my first conscious pubertal stirrings.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • The American composer Roger Sessions calls these innermost stirrings "motions or gestures of the spirit."

    Academic text (1996)

  • After years of silence, the stirrings of a new political movement began to resonate across the country.

  • As I reflected on my past, I felt the stirrings of nostalgia for my childhood.

Antonyms

stagnant
46 4.8

Not moving or changing and showing little activity

dormant
34 5.2

Not active now but able to become active later

How Noticeable

surge
132 4.2
feeling
∞ 1.0
stirring
3 3.7
hint
153 1.5

Surface Forms

stirring singular
stirrings plural

Morphology

stirring = stir (semi-transparent) = stir + ing

A nominalization of the verb 'stir' meaning a small movement or beginning feeling; morphologically regular but the figurative/incipient sense is somewhat idiomatic.

Etymology

Stirrings comes from the idea of small 'movements' inside a person. So the 'stirrings' of hope or excitement are the first small feelings that begin to grow.