▪ I. feeling, vbl. n.
(ˈfiːlɪŋ)
[f. feel v. + -ing1.]
1. a. The action of the vb. feel in various senses; an instance of the same. Chiefly gerundial.
| c 1400 Lanfranc's Cirurg. 140 In þis ben yvel signes..crampe to schite wiþoute felynge & unmovablete of alle þe membres. 1611 Bible Eph. iv. 19 Who being past feeling haue giuen themselues ouer vnto lasciuiousnesse. 1791 Boswell Johnson an. 1752, Love is not a subject of reasoning, but of feeling. 1805 Med. Jrnl. XIV. 14 From the first feeling of a febrile attack. 1833 Regul. Instr. Cavalry (1844) 44 The horse must be kept attentive by a light feeling of the bridle. |
| attrib. 1754 A. Murphy Gray's Inn Jrnl. No. 66 These, in their Feeling-hours of Distress, are reported to have reproached themselves with their Folly. |
† b. in (the) feeling: = ‘to the feel’ (see feel n. 3). Obs.
| c 1400 Lanfranc's Cirurg. 305 Whanne it is not hoot in felinge. 1577 B. Googe Heresbach's Husb. iii. (1586) 128 His hide not hard, or stubborne in feeling. 1662 J. Davies tr. Mandelslo's Trav. 155 It is of a reddish colour, as smooth, and slippery in the feeling as soap. 1669 Sturmy Mariner's Mag. v. xii. 65 The harder the Corns of Powder are in feeling, by so much the better it is. |
c. attrib. (Cf. feel v. 5.)
| a 1849 Sir R. Wilson Life (1862) I. ii. 67 So soon as the Austrian Hussars had fired with their skirmishers a few feeling shot. |
2. a. The faculty or power by which one feels (in sense 6 of the vb.); the ‘sense of touch’ in the looser acceptation of the term, in which it includes all physical sensibility not referable to the special senses of sight, hearing, taste, and smell.
| c 1175 Lamb. Hom. 75 Hore blawing, hore smelling, heore feling wes al iattret. c 1230 Hali Meid. 13 Hire fif wittes, sihðe & heringe smecchunge & smealunge & euch limes felunge. c 1340 Cursor M. 17018 (Fairf.) Heryng, speche, sight, smellyng & felyng are wyttes v. 1398 Trevisa Barth. De P.R. iii. ix. (1495) 55 The spyryte of felynge is shedde in to all the body. 1535 Coverdale 2 Kings iv. 31 There was nether voyce ner felynge. 1601 Holland Pliny x. lxxi. 306 There is not a living creature..but hath the sence of feeling, although it have none else. 1669 A. Browne Ars Pict. (1675) 65 Finally by the feeling, we touch cold and hot, moist and dry. 1712 Addison Spect. No. 411 ¶1 The Sense of Feeling can indeed give us a Notion of..Shape. 1727 A. Hamilton New Acc. E. Ind. II. xli. 109 The Elephant would find out the Gold among the Lead, by the nice Feeling of his Proboscis. 1828 Stark Elem. Nat. Hist. I. 30 A hoof..blunts the feeling, and renders the foot incapable of seizing. 1871 R. Ellis Catullus lxiv. 189 Yet from grief-worn limbs shall feeling wholly depart not. |
b. A physical sensation or perception through the sense of touch or the general sensibility of the body.
| c 1380 Wyclif Serm. Sel. Wks. II. 10 Wiþ þis felyng of þis womman God ȝaf hir witt to prophecie þus. 1614 Raleigh Hist. World iii. §7. 45 The ayre is so thinne, that it is not sufficient to beare vp the body of a bird hauing therein no feeling of her wings. 1805 Med. Jrnl. XIV. 242 It is often difficult..to describe on paper every feeling and appearance we notice. 1851 Carpenter Man. Phys. (ed. 2) 572 A feeling of some of the corporeal changes taking place within them⁓selves. 1884 tr. Lotze's Metaph. 524 That feeling which instructs us respecting the position, the movement, and the amount of exertion of our limbs. |
† 3. Passive experience; sensible proof; knowledge of an object through having felt its effects.
| 1526 Tindale Rom. v. 4 Pacience bryngeth felynge, felynge bryngeth hope. 1630 R. Johnson's Kingd. & Commw. 100 Spaine both knowes us, and hath of late had some feeling of us. |
4. a. The condition of being emotionally affected; an instance of this; an emotion. Often specialized by of with fear, hope, etc.
| c 1400 Test. Love i. (1532) 327/1 Al my passyons and felynges weren loste. 1600 J. Pory tr. Leo's Africa ii. 392 The which with great feeling, and contentment having understood..he instituted a Synod. 1632 J. Hayward tr. Biondi's Eromena 28 He felt in his heart..a..conceit or feeling of feare. 1639 tr. Du Bosq's Compl. Woman ii. 13 Separation is so often made without any feeling. 1678 Butler Hud. iii. ii. 1685 Fear that keeps all Feeling out As lesser pains are by the Gout. 1814 Scott Wav. lxi, Feelings more easily conceived than described. 1839 T. Beale Sperm Whale 281 From that moment a feeling of hopelessness ran through us. 1856 Froude Hist. Eng. (1858) I. v. 463 All classes..were agreed in one common feeling of displeasure. 1877 E. R. Conder Bas. Faith i. 13 Religious feelings differ from other feelings by their nature and by their object. |
b. pl. in collective sense. Emotions, susceptibilities, sympathies.
| 1771 E. Griffith tr. Viaud's Shipwreck 4 They need none of these heightenings to interest the feelings of my friend. 1791 Mrs. Radcliffe Rom. Forest x, She tried to command her feelings so as to avoid disturbing the family. 1804 Nelson Lett. (1814) II. 57 Do not hurt my feelings by telling me that I neglect any opportunity. 1828 J. W. Croker C. Papers (1884) I. xiii. 404 All my time being employed in assuaging what gentlemen call their feelings. 1850 Mrs. Stowe Uncle Tom's C. vii, Both saw the absolute necessity of putting a constraint on their feelings. |
5. Capacity or readiness to feel; susceptibility to the higher and more refined emotions; esp. sensibility or tenderness for the sufferings of others. good feeling: kindly and equitable spirit.
| 1588 Shakes. L.L.L. iv. ii. 80 We thankfull should be Which we of taste and feeling are, for those parts that doe fructifie in vs more then he. 1600 E. Blount tr. Conestaggio 44 Who if he had any feeling of a man, should [etc.]. 1622 Bacon Hen. VII 33 Their king..out of a Princely feeling, was sparing, and compassionate towards his Subjects. 1731 Swift Let. to Gay 10 Sept., She has..not one grain of Feeling. 1752 Hume Ess. & Treat. (1777) I. 4 The delicacy of his feeling makes him sensibly touched. 1796 Jane Austen Sense & Sens. xv. (1852) 63 Is he not a man of honour and feeling? 1802 M. Edgeworth Moral T. (1816) I. xvii. 142 He thinks I have no feeling. 1848 Macaulay Hist. Eng. II. 89 The Church of England was saved from this outrage by the good sense and good feeling of the pope. 1849 Ruskin Sev. Lamps ii. §19. 49 A woman of feeling would not wear false jewels. |
6. Pleasurable or painful consciousness, emotional appreciation or sense (of one's own condition or some external fact).
| c 1400 Rom. Rose 6449 Who so hath in his felyng The consequence of such shryvyng. 1605 Shakes. Lear iv. vi. 287, I..haue ingenious feeling Of my huge Sorrowes. 1638 Baker tr. Balzac's Lett. I. 69 The feeling I have of the courtesies received from him. 1683 D. A. Art Converse 56 You would easily be wrought into some feeling of your folly in this point. 1705 Stanhope Paraphr. II. 296 They have already sufficient feeling of their disease. 1814 D'Israeli Quarrels Auth. (1867) 379 He was..too conscious of his superiority to betray a feeling of injury. 1828 Scott F.M. Perth ii, To encourage with a feeling of safety those whom [etc.]. 1874 J. T. Micklethwaite Mod. Par. Churches 30 The feeling of perfect equality inside the church. |
7. a. What one feels in regard to something; emotional attitude or opinion, sentiment. † In early use (cf. feel v. 15 a): Opinion.
| c 1449 Pecock Repr. 87 The disturblaunce and dyuerse feelingis had among ȝou silf now in Ynglond. c 1450 tr. De Imitatione i. ix, Wherfore truste not to muche in thin ovne felyng, but desire gladly to here oþir mennys felinges. 1760 Goldsm. Cit. W. xxxviii, If we survey a king not only opposing his own feelings, but reluctantly refusing those he regards. 1771 E. Griffith tr. Viaud's Shipwreck 236, I communicated my thoughts and feelings to Mr. Wright. 1828 D'Israeli Chas. I, I. v. 120 The feelings of the Romanists were sadly put to the test by a circumstance which now occurred. Ibid. II. xi. 287 The feelings of two ages attest the greatness of Hampden's name. 1863 Mrs. Carlyle Lett. III. 186 You know my feelings about religious excitement-ecstatics. 1874 Green Short Hist. viii. §10. 577 Cromwell bowed to the feeling of the nation. 1875 Jowett Plato (ed. 2) V. 7 They have the feelings of old men about youth. |
b. transf. Of a language: Instinctive preferences of expression.
| 1875 Jowett Plato (ed. 2) I. p. xv, The feeling of the modern language is more opposed to tautology. |
c. In commercial use, feeling (of the market): the degree of readiness to buy prevailing amongst traders.
| 1888 Daily News 11 July 2/7 An improved feeling is also perceptible in ropes. |
8. In objective sense: The quality or condition which is felt to belong to anything; the impression produced by it upon a person.
| 1593 Shakes. Rich. II, i. iii. 301 The apprehension of the good, Giues but the greater feeling to the worse. 1884 W. C. Smith Kildrostan 45 He nigh lost his wits ere morning..So weird-like was the feeling of the place. |
9. Psychol. a. By some writers (e.g. Brown, J. Mill, J. S. Mill) used for ‘a fact or state of consciousness’. b. By others as a generic term comprising sensation, desire, and emotion, but excluding perception and thought. c. After Kant's use of gefühl, restricted to the element of pleasure or pain in any mental state. d. An intuitive cognition or belief neither requiring nor admitting of proof.
| 1739 Hume Treatise i. iv. §4 I. 513 Tho' bodies are felt by means of their solidity, yet the feeling is a quite different thing from the solidity. c 1810 Brown Lect. Philos. xi. (1838) 71 Consciousness..is only a general term for all our feelings, of whatever species these may be,—sensations, thoughts, desires;—in short, all those states or affections of mind in which the phenomena of mind consist. Ibid. xxvi. (1838) 166/2 The feelings of extension, resistance, joy, sorrow, fragrance, colour, hope, fear, heat, cold, admiration, resentment. 1836–7 Hamilton Lect. Metaph. (1859) I. xi. 186 This division of the phænomena of mind into the three great classes of the Cognitive faculties,—the Feelings, or capacities of Pleasure and Pain,—and the Exertive or Conative Powers.. was first promulgated by Kant. Ibid. II. xli. 492 The first grand distribution of our feelings will, therefore, be into the Sensations,—that is, the Sensitive or External Feelings; and into the Sentiments,—that is, the Mental or Internal Feelings. 1841–2 ― in Reid's Wks. 760 Feeling is a term preferable to Consciousness..in so far as the latter does not mark so well the simplicity, ultimacy, and incomprehensibility of our original apprehensions. 1846 Mill Logic i. iii. §3. 66 Feeling, in the proper sense of the term, is a genus, of which Sensation, Emotion, and Thought, are subordinate species. 1855 Bain Senses & Int. i. i. §3 The presence of Feeling is the foremost..mark of mind. 1871 Tyndall Fragm. Sc. (1879) II. xv. 375 Feeling appeared in the world before knowledge. 1875 Jowett Plato (ed. 2) IV. 14 Feeling is not opposed to knowledge, and in all consciousness there is an element of both. 1892 Sully The Human Mind iv. I. 64 The term feeling..in a stricter sense is confined to those modes of consciousness which are in a peculiar sense affections of the subject, and which do not, in the same direct way as our thoughts and volitions, involve a clear reference to objects. Ibid. xiii. II. 1 We include under the head of feeling all psychical states or phenomena so far as they have the element or aspect of the agreeable and disagreeable. |
e. Const. in, into, out.
| 1926 H. J. Laski Let. 2 May (1953) II. 838 The acute pleasure that the feeling-out of other minds gives one. 1933 H. Read Art Now i. 49 No mere fellow-feeling, or feeling with, but rather a form of imaginative identification of the self with the object, a feeling into. 1949 Koestler Insight & Outlook xxvi. 359 This feeling-in process, or empathy, is..based on the projection of part of our own personality into the shell of the other. |
10. In Fine Art; cf. senses 4–6. a. Painting. (see quot. 1854). b. Archit. The general tone of a building or style of architecture; the impression produced on a spectator.
| 1854 Fairholt Dict. Terms Art, Feeling, that visible quality in a work of Art which forcibly depicts the mental emotion of the painter, or which exhibits his perfect mastery over the materials of Art. 1859 Jephson Brittany v. 52 A favourable example of Renaissance, retaining as it does much Gothic feeling. 1874 J. T. Micklethwaite Mod. Par. Churches 10 If the whole feeling of a building leads up to one point. |
c. Of a musical performer: Sympathetic appreciation of the emotional purport of a composition, manifested in the manner of rendering.
| 1824 Byron Juan xvi. xli, The circle..applauds..the tones, the feeling, and the execution. |
11. attrib. and Comb.: (sense 9), esp. after G. compounds of gefühl, e.g. gefühlston (Wundt).
| 1892 Sully The Human Mind iv. I. 8 The proposition that feeling as such has no quality (apart from the feeling-quality itself, agreeableness, disagreeableness) is held by most psychologists. 1892 Rep. 2nd Internat. Congr. Exper. Psychol. 34 The feeling-tone of belief appeared..completely neutral, except so far as the subject-matter of belief caused it to have a pleasureable or painful quality. 1894 D. Irons in Mind III. 93 Under feeling should be included on the one hand pleasure and pain, and on the other that feeling towards the object, which for the present we may call feeling attitude. The term is not unexceptionable, but is used for convenience instead of some such formula as ‘feeling in relation to’. 1901 E. B. Titchener Exper. Psychol. I. i. ii. 54 Likeness may mean ‘likeness of feeling-effect’. 1906 S. S. Laurie Synthetica I. 136 This entitative feeling-potency does not contain the ‘modes’ of sense. 1909 W. M. Urban Valuation ii. 37 Feeling or feeling-disposition is always presupposed by desire. 1912 [see ambivalence, -ency]. 1919 M. K. Bradby Psycho-Analysis 58 Certain unconscious factors..give the complex its peculiar feeling-tone. Ibid. 150 A woman who heard the first maroon announcing the Armistice on November 11th, 1918, responded with an instantaneous feeling-thought. 1920 T. P. Nunn Education 125 Feeling-spread is almost wholly biological imitation. Ibid. 134 Pugnacity is an example of the instincts in which the feeling-element is a definite emotion. 1937 Discovery July 216/2 The feeling-values of purple and violet are ‘uncertain’. 1960 C. Day Lewis Buried Day iii. 56, I all unwittingly responded with the feeling-tone of a woman. |
▪ II. feeling, ppl. a.
(ˈfiːlɪŋ)
[f. as prec. + -ing2.]
That feels.
1. a. That is the subject of sensation; sentient. b. Capable of sensation; sensitive.
| c 1400 Lanfranc's Cirurg. (MS. A) 174 In þe heed þerof is fleisch þat is felynge. c 1430 Hymns Virg. (1867) 19 Wiþ beestis, feelinge lijf haue we. 1548–77 Vicary Anat. iv. (1888) 31 Seuen payre of sensatiue or feeling senews. 1602 Carew Cornwall 6 a, Then passe on to those things, of growing, and feeling life, which upon her face doe relieue themselues. 1867 M. Arnold Youth & Calm Poems 1877 I. 24 For feeling nerves and living breath. |
| transf. 1680 Otway Orphan iii. vii, The feeling Ayr's at rest. |
2. Affected by emotion; accessible to emotion; sympathetic, compassionate.
| 1618 E. Elton Rom. vii. (1622) 494 Let them with feeling hearts magnifie the Name of the Lord. 1639 Bury Wills (1850) 179, I haue bene, am, and ever shalbee, a feeleing member. 1772 Ann. Reg. 194/2 The whole demeanor..did honour to them as feeling men, and peaceable citizens. 1854 J. S. C. Abbott Napoleon (1855) I. xiv. 243 Bonaparte, apart from politics, was feeling, kind, and accessible to pity. |
b. Of language, manner, etc.: Indicating emotion or sensibility.
| a 1586 Sidney Arcadia Wks. (Grosart) II. 61 Thy wailing words do much my spirit moue, They uttered are in such a feeling fashion. 1590 Spenser F.Q. iii. ii. 15 His feeling wordes her feeble sence much pleased. 1737 Hist. Clorana 77 This discourse was too feeling for Bellmont to bear much longer. 1799 Sheridan Pizarro iv. i, A feeling boldness in those eyes assures me that [etc.]. 1880 Mrs. J. H. Riddell Myst. Palace Gard. xiv. (1881) 135 He could not have used more feeling language. |
3. In quasi-passive sense: That is deeply or sensibly felt or realized, heart-felt, acute, vivid.
| 1530 Tindale Answ. More Wks. (1573) 250/1 God hath..geuen them a feeling faith of the mercy that is in Christ Jesu. 1556 J. Heywood Spider & F. liii. 31 It was to him, a feeling greefe of grudge. 1605 Shakes. Lear iv. vi. 226. 1632 J. Hayward tr. Biondi's Eromena 150 Knowing now by a feeling experience, her fathers reasons to be true. 1706 Cibber Perolla i, It is a feeling Pleasure With such Excesses to afflict thy Soul. 1721 Southerne Oroon. v. iv, I had a feeling [ed. 1696 living] sense Of all your royal favours. |