brooding

/brudɪŋ/

/ˈbrudɪŋ/

Other forms: broodingly

When you're dwelling on something, you're brooding about it — this can be thoughtful or morbidly obsessed.

When you're brooding, you might be depressed about something you just can't stop thinking about — like the lead character in Hamlet. Brooding can also mean you're being extremely thoughtful, contemplative, meditative, musing, reflective, or ruminative — those are all good things. You have to look at the context to see if someone is brooding in a positive or negative way. This is also a word for what chickens and other egg-laying animals do: sitting on eggs to help them hatch.

Definitions of brooding

1. adjective

   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”

   synonyms: broody, contemplative, meditative, musing, pensive, pondering, reflective, ruminative

   thoughtful

   exhibiting or characterized by careful thought
2. noun

   persistent morbid meditation on a problem
   synonyms: pensiveness

   type of:

   melancholy

   a feeling of thoughtful sadness
3. noun

   sitting on eggs so as to hatch them by the warmth of the body
   synonyms: incubation

   type of:

   birth, birthing, giving birth, parturition

   the process of giving birth