belonging

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /bɪˈlɒŋɪŋ/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /bɪˈlɔŋɪŋ/
• (cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /bɪˈlɑŋɪŋ/

• Audio (GA)

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• Rhymes: -ɒŋɪŋ
• Hyphenation: be‧long‧ing

From belong +‎ -ing.

belonging (countable and uncountable, plural belongings)

1. (uncountable) The feeling that one belongs.

   I have a feeling of belonging in London.

   A need for belonging seems fundamental to humans.

2. (countable, chiefly in the plural) Something physical that is owned.

   Make sure you take all your belongings when you leave.

   • c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:

     […] Thyself and thy belongings

#*: Are not thine own so proper as to waste / Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.

1. • 1939, John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, New York: Compass, 1958, Chapter 9, p. 117,

     In the little houses the tenant people sifted their belongings and the belongings of their fathers and of their grandfathers. Picked over their possessions for the journey to the west.

   • 1966, Truman Capote, In Cold Blood, New York: Modern Library, 1992, Part I, p. 22,

     Now, upstairs, she changed into faded Levis and a green sweater, and fastened round her wrist her third most valued belonging, a gold watch […]

2. (plural only, colloquial, dated) family; relations; household.
   • 1854, Arthur Pendennis [pseudonym; William Makepeace Thackeray], chapter XXXIII, in The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], →OCLC, page 322:

     When Lady Kew said Sic volo, sic jubeo [Thus I will, thus I command], I promise you few persons of her ladyship’s belongings stopped, before they did her biddings, to ask her reasons.

   • 1896, Joseph Conrad, chapter III, in An Outcast of the Islands, London: T. Fisher Unwin […], →OCLC, part II, page 121:

     As soon as the principal personages were seated, the verandah of the house was filled silently by the muffled-up forms of Lakamba’s female belongings.

• (something physical that is owned): possession, thing

From Middle English belonginge, belanging, belangand, equivalent to belong +‎ -ing.

belonging

1. present participle of belong

• englobing