| 释义 |
▪ I. being, vbl. n.|ˈbiːɪŋ|
Forms: 3–6 beinge, 4–6 beyng(e, 5 beenge, beying(e, byinge, 6–7 beeing, 5– being.
[f. be v. + -ing1.]
1. a. Existence, the fact of belonging to the universe of things material or immaterial.
c1325E.E. Allit. P. A. 446 Þe court of þe kyndom of god alyue, Hatz a property in hyt self beyng. 1340Ayenb. 103 Þet ne ziggeþ propreliche þe zoþe of þe byinge of God. 1413Lydg. Pylgr. Sowle iv. xxviii. (1483) 74 The seed..wherof they taken their beynge. 1506Ord. Crysten Men. (W. de W.) i. vi. 50, I byleue in the holy chyrche catholyke..the beynge of all sayntes. 1534Tindale Acts xvii. 28 In him we lyve, move & have oure beynge. 1647May Hist. Parl. ii. ii. 22 To subvert the very Rights and Beeings of Parliament. 1667Milton P.L. ii. 441 With utter loss of being Threatens him. 1712Addison Spect. No. 381 ⁋4 The great Author of our being. 1734Pope Ess. Man iv. 1 Oh happiness! our being's end and aim. 1750Johnson Rambl. No. 72 ⁋2 Good humour..is the balm of being. 1868Freeman Norm. Conq. (1876) II. App. 610 The house had no corporate being.
b. in being: existing, extant, alive.
1676Allen Addr. Non-Conf. 48 The Church in being before, had thereby a new Illumination. 1702Addison Chr. Relig. (1727) 278 Had he quoted a record not in being, or made a false statement. 1788J. Powell Devises (1827) II. 91 A legacy, to a person in being at the time the will is made.
c. Life, physical existence.
1596Shakes. Tam. Shr. i. i. 10 Pisa..Gaue me my being. 1662Stillingfleet Orig. Sacræ iii. ii. §10 That a power infinite should raise an Insect into Being. 1676Dryden Aureng-z. iii. i. 1476 Our Prophet's care Commands the Beings ev'n of Brutes to spare. 1713Guardian No. 1 ⁋2 In all the occurrences of a various being. 1754Sherlock Disc. (1759) I. ii. 76 To call Men from the Graue into Being. 1766C. Beatty Two Months Tour (1768) 92 In this pleasurable manner they spent their beings. 1812J. Wilson Isle of Palms ii. 155 Hopeless woe the spring of being feeds.
†d. Occurrence, happening. Obs.
1624Capt. Smith Virginia (1629) 180 (margin), A strange being of Rauens.
2. a. Existence in some relation of place or condition.
1526Tindale Luke ix. 33 Master, it is goode beinge here for us. 1535Coverdale ibid., Master here is good beynge for vs. a1617Hieron Wks. I. 3 Entrance in at the gate presupposeth a beeing without the gate. 1682Burnet Rights Princes iii. 81 What he has acquired during his being a Bishop. 1692Ray Disc. ii. v. (1732) 208 The Being of Wolves and Foxes..anciently in this Island. Mod. After being at home for some time. Through being so tired.
†b. Condition. Obs.
c1300K. Alis. 224 Heo asked his beinge, an hast. c1440Lonelich Grail xlii. 232 Now have I ȝow told al in fere Of owre beenge & of owre manere. 1548Thomas Ital. Gram., Freschezza, lustinesse or fresh beyng.
†c. Position, standing (in the world). Obs.
1627Feltham Resolves i. lxxvi. (1677) 116 Whosoever comes to place from a mean being, had need haue..Virtue. 1685Evelyn Mem. (1857) II. 246 Colonel Norton, who though now in being..was formerly a very fierce commander in the first rebellion. 1712Steele Spect. No. 544 ⁋2 Such..as want help towards getting into some being in the world. 1818Cobbett Resid. U.S. (1822) 349 He has not kept house; he has had no being in any neighbourhood.
†d. Livelihood, living, subsistence. Obs.
1579Spenser Sheph. Cal. Sept. 33 No being for those, that truly mene, But for such as of guile maken gayne. 1667Decay Chr. Piety viii. §44. 292 A bare being was all could be expected. 1722Steele Consc. Lovers iii. i. (1755) 46 It will be nothing for them to give us a little Being of our own, some small Tenement, out of their large Possessions. 1731Medley Kolben's Cape G. Hope II. 45 Several others..had likewise very good Beings there.
3. a. Existence viewed as a property possessed by anything; substance, constitution, nature.
1340Hampole Pr. Consc. 17 Als God in a [= one] substance and beyng With outen any bygynnyng. 1398Trevisa Barth. De P.R. ii. ii. (1495) 28 The comparyson bitwene a poynte and a lyne in beynge. 1581Fulke in Confer. iii. (1584) Y, The proper substance of Christes body remaineth not, but a generall being thereof. 1659J. Arrowsmith Armilla Catech. iv. iii. §3. 187 Our very being is none of ours. 1855Prescott Philip II, I. ii. v. 192 The Romish faith may be said to have entered into the being of the Spaniard. 1860Hawthorne Marble Faun xiii. (1883) 147 Nature has made women especially prone to throw their whole being into what is technically called love.
b. Essential substance, essence.
1530Palsgr. 197/1 Beyng, essence. 1656H. More Antid. Ath. i. iii. (1662) 13, I define God therefore an Essence or Being fully and absolutely perfect. 1860Emerson Cond. Life 187 We are one day to deal with real being—essences with essences.
4. a. That which exists or is conceived as existing; in philosophical language, the widest term applicable to all objects of sense or thought, material or immaterial.
a1628F. Greville Cœlia, Sonn. vii. 46 No being was secure. 1690Locke Hum. Und. iii. v. §5 Species of Actions which were only the Creatures of their own Understandings; Beings that had no other existence, but in their own Minds. a1704― Posth. Wks. (1706) 86 A word may be made use of, as if it stood for some real Being. 1714J. Fortescue-Aland Fortescue's Abs. & Lim. Mon. 6 In the Nature of Ideas, Legal Beings, as I may call them, are as capable of Demonstration, as Mathematical ones. 1843Mill Logic i. iii. §2. 62 Being is..applied impartially to matter and to mind..A Being is that which excites feelings, and which possesses attributes.
b. Applied with various qualifications, e.g. ‘the Supreme Being,’ to God.
c1600J. Davies in Farr S.P. I. 244 He that was, and is, and cannot fade, This Beeing infinite. 1688Cudworth Immut. Mor. iv. iv. (1731) 250 There is a God, or an Omnipotent and Omniscient Being. 1712Addison Spect. No. 381 ⁋8 Atheism, by which I mean a disbelief of a Supreme Being. 1761Sterne Tr. Shandy III. xlix, That kind Being, who is a friend to the friendless, shall recompence thee for this. 1875Scrivener Lect. Grk. Test. 6 That the Supreme Being should have thus far interfered with the course of his providential arrangements.
c. A human being, a person. (Sometimes contemptuous; sometimes idealistic.)
1751Johnson Rambl. No. 141 ⁋6 A wit..a species of beings only heard of at the university. 1802M. Edgeworth Moral T. (1816) I. xii. 100 This mean, incorrigible being said to himself. 1816J. Wilson City of Plague i. iii. 33 There I saw A white-robed Being on her knees. 1852C. M. Yonge Cameos II. xxix. 307 The veiled girlish being on whom Henry had set his vehement heart.
d. Phrases in Philos., formed mainly to translate the corresponding Ger. and Fr. expressions, as being-for-(it)self, conscious being; being as actuality; being-in-(it)self, being that lacks conscious awareness; being as mere potentiality; being-itself, pure being, regarded as infinite and uncharacterizable; being-with, human existence, regarded as membership of the community of persons.
1854Ferrier Inst. Metaph. 525 Our alleged ignorance of ‘Being in itself’. 1865J. H. Stirling Secret of Hegel II. iii. 8 Being-for-self is the literal rendering of Fürsichseyn; which, indeed, cannot be translated otherwise. 1874G. S. Morris tr. F. Ueberweg's Hist. Philos. II. iii. 241 The Idea runs through a series of stages, from its abstract being-out-of-self in space and time to the being-in-self of individuality in the animal organism, their succession depending on the progressive realization of the tendency to being-for-self, or to subjectivity. 1892E. S. Haldane tr. Hegel's Lect. Hist. Philos. I. 20 Two different states must be distinguished. The first is what is known as capacity, power, what I call being-in-itself..; the second principle is that of being-for-itself, actuality. Ibid. 24 Being-in-self and being-for-self are the moments present in action. 1892W. Wallace tr. Hegel's Logic vii. 179 The readiest instance of Being-for-self is found in the ‘I’. We know ourselves as existents. 1945Mind LIV. 177 Since the subject realises itself as a subject, it has being-for-itself and therefore also possesses being-in-itself. 1956F. Copleston Contemp. Philos. xi. 180 Being-in-the-world is being-with (Mitsein). 1957Sc. Jrnl. Theol. X. 236 Being-itself, for Tillich, is the only non-symbolic or literal definition of God. 1962R. G. Olson Existentialism ii. 38 In Satre's system the noumenal world..is named ‘being-in-itself’ or sometimes simply ‘the in-itself’. 1963Times Lit. Suppl. 24 May 376/5 A certain..complacency..seems..to pervade this world of mutual ‘being-with’.
▪ II. being, ppl. a.|ˈbiːɪŋ|
[f. be v. + -ing2.]
1. Existing, present; esp. in phr. the time being.
1458Test Ebor. (1855) II. 225 The covent of the priore..for the tyme beyng, and thair successours. 1523Ld. Berners Froiss. I. ccxii. 257 The kynges of Englande for the tyme beynge. 1788J. Powell Devises (1827) II. 341 Where there is a gift to the elder son in terms which would carry it to the eldest for the time being.
2. absol. = It being the case that, seeing, since. See be v. B. I.3. |
