FIGURING • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Figuring

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/fˈɪgjərɪŋ/ Listen

verb

Figure v. t. (past & past part. figured; pres. part. figuring)

1.

To represent by a figure, as to form or mold; to make an image of, either palpable or ideal; also, to fashion into a determinate form; to shape. "If love, alas! be pain I bear," "No thought can figure, and no tongue declare.Prior."

2.

To embellish with design; to adorn with figures. "The vaulty top of heaven Figured quite o'er with burning meteors."

3.

To indicate by numerals; also, to compute. "As through a crystal glass the figured hours are seen."

4.

To represent by a metaphor; to signify or symbolize. "Whose white vestments figure innocence."

5.

To prefigure; to foreshow. "In this the heaven figures some event."

6.

(Mus.)

(a)

To write over or under the bass, as figures or other characters, in order to indicate the accompanying chords.

(b)

To embellish.

To figure out, to solve; to compute or find the result of.

To figure up, to add; to reckon; to compute the amount of.

Figure v. i.

1.

To make a figure; to be distinguished or conspicious; as, the envoy figured at court. "Sociable, hospitable, eloquent, admired, figuring away brilliantly."

2.

To calculate; to contrive; to scheme; as, he is figuring to secure the nomination. (Colloq.)

go figure a phrase used by itself as an interjection to mean "How can one explain that?", or to express puzzlement over some seeming contradiction. (Colloq.)

See images of 'Figuring'

Etymology of 'Figuring'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Figuring" Quotes from Famous Books

... against Fillmore's interest to gain votes from Fremont in Illinois. He demonstrated his point, but he was not always judicious in his way of addressing solemn strangers, and in his rural manner he concludes his letter, "the whole thing is as simple as figuring out the weight of three small hogs," and this inelegant sentence conveys with little exaggeration one especial merit of his often austerely graceful language. Grave difficulties are handled in a style which could arouse ...

— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... and spools and little wooden wheels he had made and which he and his father "played with" each evening. Beryl had often wondered why Dale seemed to care so much about it; why he spent hours and hours drawing and figuring on bits of paper. Of course it amused the father, who, during the day, cut the spools into tiny wheels, with a sharp jack-knife; but it must be stupid for Dale to spend all of his evenings over the silly thing. Beryl often lounged on the back of his chair and listened ...

— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott

... suggestion, I believe, of Dr. George Bird Grinnell and Hamlin Garland, an attempt was made under President Roosevelt to systematize the Indian nomenclature. The Indian in his native state bears no surname; and wife and children figuring under entirely different names from that of the head of the family, the law has been unnecessarily embarrassed. I received a special appointment to revise the allotment rolls of the Sioux nation. It was my duty to group the various members of one family under ...

— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman

... many beet seeds for a meal; so many meals for a row, with never two rows of anything, with hardly a full-length row of anything, and with all the rows of different lengths, as if gardening were a sort of geometry or a problem in arithmetic, figuring your vegetable with the meal for a common divisor—how many times it will go into all your rows without leaving ...

— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... grows up to the sky, and an old man, meaning the sun, climbs up by it to heaven, and sees everything. This comes very near the story of Jack, who sells his cow for a handful of beans, and his mother scatters them in the garden, and throws her apron over her head and weeps, thus figuring the Night and the Rain; and, shielded by the night and watered by the rain, the bean grows up to the sky, and Jack climbs to the Ogre's land, and carries off the bags of gold, and the wonderful hen that lays a golden egg every day, and the golden ...

— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce

Copyright © 2026 Free-Translator.com