Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Something that is built, as for human habitation; a structure.
- noun The act, process, art, or occupation of constructing.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In mining, a wall or pillar built of stone to support the roof in long-wall mining; a pack-wall.
- noun The act of constructing, erecting, or establishing.
- noun A fabric built or constructed; a structure; an edifice; as commonly understood, a house for residence, business, or public use, or for shelter of animals or storage of goods.
- noun A flock or number: said of rooks.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The act of constructing, erecting, or establishing.
- noun The art of constructing edifices, or the practice of civil architecture.
- noun That which is built; a fabric or edifice constructed, as a house, a church, etc.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun uncountable The act or process of
building . - noun A closed
structure withwalls and aroof . - verb Present participle of
build .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the act of constructing something
- noun a structure that has a roof and walls and stands more or less permanently in one place
- noun the occupants of a building
- noun the commercial activity involved in repairing old structures or constructing new ones
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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GROSS: And in "Crying," it just keeps building and building� Mr. BURNETT: Yeah.
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[41] We who, in many departments, ways, make _the building up of the masses, _ by _building up grand individuals_, our shibboleth: and in brief that is the marrow of this book.
Complete Prose Works Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy Walt Whitman 1855
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WORDS OF SIMILAR SOUND: canvas (cloth) principle (rule) canvass (all meanings except _cloth_) principal (chief) capitol (a building) stationary (immovable) capital (all meanings except _building_) stationery (articles) counsel (advice or an adviser) miner (a workman) council (a body of persons) minor (under age) complement (a completing element) angel (a spiritual being) compliment (praise) angle (geometrical) 205.
Practical Grammar and Composition Thomas Wood
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©f the building; Above this wc fee, that each of the* corner towers on the north fide, had a fair newel ftair - cafe at the top of the tower, and that corbels were left for flooring at different ftories of the building*
A Walk in and about the City of Canterbury: With Many Observations Not Hitherto Described in Any ... 1779
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Height of main building is 45 m and total area size of 200 000 m2 of roof surface, an attractive figure for a theme park.
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"The nation I'm most interested in building is America."
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"The nation I'm most interested in building is our own."
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Great line: "The nation I'm most interested in building is our own."
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The Sun Valley Center simply calls the house The Center, Hailey, and makes little of the Pound connection; the arts organization's main building is in nearby Ketchum
Pound House 2008
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The Sun Valley Center simply calls the house The Center, Hailey, and makes little of the Pound connection; the arts organization's main building is in nearby Ketchum
May 2008 2008
qroqqa commented on the word building
Damp rotten houses, many to let, many yet building, many half-built and mouldering away—
—The Old Curiosity Shop, ch. 15
This illustrates the old passive sense of the gerund-participle. Around 1800 a new construction came into use, and instead of saying the house was building, people now said it was being built. During the nineteenth century some prescriptivists deprecated this; but for some reason it prevailed without qualm, and there are no longer any superstitions about it.
Earlier still the construction was 'The house is a building', with 'a' a reduced form of the preposition 'on': we would now write this as 'a-building', if only to distance it from the other reading ('a' a determinative and 'building' a noun).
August 7, 2008