LEXIS

English · noun / adjective · Descent

longing

/ˈlɒŋɪŋ/

A yearning named from distance: to grow long toward what is far.

The history is a descent. A Germanic verb of growing long becomes a verb of yearning, because the desired thing is a long way off. Love is a neighbor, not the root. Belong is a look-alike that is not this word.

Morphology Verbal noun of long (v.) + -ing. The verb is Old English langian, literally ‘to grow long, lengthen’.

  1. Proto-Indo-European (proposed) · reconstructed

    *dlonghos- / *del-1

    long

    Harper: Germanic *langa- is perhaps from PIE *dlonghos- (Latin longus, Sanskrit dīrgha-, Greek dolikhos). Reconstruction, not a surviving text.

  2. Proto-Germanic · reconstructed

    *langōjaną1,7

    to desire, to long; to grow long

  3. Old English · pre-1100

    langian1,4,6

    to yearn after, grieve for; literally to grow long, lengthen

    Liberman: Old English had langian and longian, ‘to desire’ and ‘to grow long’, either two words or two meanings of one verb.

  4. Old English · pre-1100

    langung2,5

    longing, weariness, sadness

  5. Middle English · c. 1100–1500

    longen / longinge1,7

    to long; a longing

  6. Modern English · modern

    longing2

    yearning; the present participle and the noun

Senses through time

  1. Old English

    Langung: longing, weariness, sadness, dejection. The verbal noun already names an inner lengthening, not only a measured one.2,5

    Established

  2. Middle English

    Yearning, eager desire. The compound luue langing (love-longing) is attested from about 1300. Love sits beside the word. It does not supply the etymology.2,3

    Established

  3. modern

    An earnest, often melancholic desire for what is absent, unattained, or lost.2,7

    Established

  4. 1899 dictionary

    A later special sense: the peculiar desires of pregnancy, recorded as pathological in the Century Dictionary.2

    Established

Semantic change

  • to grow long, lengthen

    already Old English

    to yearn after what is far

    The inner sense is not a late metaphor pasted on. OE langian already means to yearn, with the literal ‘grow long’ still audible. Established1,6

  • weariness, dejection (OE langung)

    Middle English

    eager desire (ME and later)

    The noun keeps sadness in Old English. Later English leans toward craving. Both remain in the modern word. Probable2

Cognates and neighbors

Resemblance is not lineage. Translation is not descent.

  • Old Norse

    langa1

    to long, desire

    Cognate

  • German

    verlangen1

    to desire, demand

    Cognate

  • Old High German

    langen1

    to long

    Cognate

  • Latin

    longus1

    long, extended, distant. Cognate of the adjective, not the source of English long.

    Cognate

  • English look-alike

    belong6

    Liberman: belong has nothing to do with longing. Do not derive one from the other by spelling.

    False cognate

Read the text

  • Old English langung, ‘longing, weariness, sadness, dejection’, verbal noun from long (v.).2
  • love-longing, from about 1300, luue langing.3

Two shores

Constellation

Elon Musk

No plate in the inspected public worlds yet.

No primary-source occurrence in the built lexicon yet.

Follow the number

Numerical analysis comes after language. Historical systems and modern English mappings are labeled. Misses are kept. Further calculation lives at CIPHER.

78 · reduced 6 · miss

  • 78 · reduced 6

    Modern mapping · miss

    Modern English ordinal (A=1…Z=26)

    Sum of letter positions in LONGING. Modern mapping, declared before the result.

    78, reduced 6. Not 42. The miss is retained. A modern sum does not inhabit Old English langung.

Ask the next question

Ask the next question

  • If to long once meant to grow long, when did distance become desire?
  • Is longing a kind of love, or a kind of length?
  • Why do belong and longing look related when they are not?

Neighbors

  • With Love: Owns a designed love arithmetic. LEXIS owns the history of longing as length, which is not that rhyme.

Notes

Notes
  1. Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, long (adj., v.).
  2. Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, longing (n., adj.).
  3. Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, love-longing.
  4. Bosworth–Toller, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, langian.
  5. Bosworth–Toller, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, langung.
  6. Anatoly Liberman, ‘The long arm of etymology, or, longing for word origins,’ Oxford University Press blog (13 September 2006).
  7. Wiktionary, longing.

Last verified 2026-09-18