Word.ws English Dictionary

pondering

pondering is the present participle and gerund of ponder.

Meaning of ponder

Verb

ponder (third-person singular simple present ponders, present participle pondering, simple past and past participle pondered)

  1. To wonder, think of deeply.
    • Some days, the whole cast of crabs would come out of their holes and ponder at the Fishers as if a storm is taking form.2023, Sunil Santha, Climate Change, Small-Scale Fisheries, and Blue Justice: Fishscapes and Alternative Worldviews, Taylor and Francis
  2. To consider (something) carefully and thoroughly.
    • I have spent days pondering the meaning of life.
    Synonyms:
    chew over, mull over
  3. (obsolete) To weigh.

See all 7 meanings of ponder

Noun

pondering (plural ponderings)

  1. An act of rumination or cogitation.
    • Now all his ponderings, however excursive, wheeled round Isabel as their center; and back to her they came again from every excursion; and again derived some new, small germs for wonderment.1852, Herman Melville, Pierre; or The Ambiguities
    • Alas, it looked yesterday, when the Legislature returned to business, as if Premier Dalton McGuinty's peculiar maunderings and ponderings of the past several weeks risk making him just that.2009 February 18, Jim Coyle, “Spoofing of premier a bad omen”, in Toronto Star

Synonyms of pondering

Forms of pondering

Noun
pluralponderings
Adjective
comparativemore pondering
superlativemost pondering

Words formed from pondering

Questions about pondering

What does pondering mean?
Pondering means an act of rumination or cogitation.
What is pondering the present participle and gerund of?
Pondering is the present participle and gerund of ponder.
What part of speech is pondering?
Pondering is a noun.
What is the plural of pondering?
The plural of pondering is ponderings.

Words near pondering in the dictionary

  1. ponderer
  2. ponderers
  3. ponderest
  4. pondereth
  5. ponderin'
  6. pondering
  7. ponderingly
  8. ponderings
  9. ponderize
  10. ponderized
  11. ponderizes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pondering (page history and authors); ponder (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “pondering.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pondering. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.