Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Something that is built, as for human habitation; a structure.
- n. The act, process, art, or occupation of constructing.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The act of constructing, erecting, or establishing.
- n. 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. In law, anything erected by art, and fixed upon or in the soil, composed of different pieces connected together, and designed for permanent use in the position in which it is so fixed, is a building. Edw. Livingston. Thus, a pole fixed in the earth is not a building, but a fence or a wall is.
- n. A flock or number: said of rooks.
- n. In mining, a wall or pillar built of stone to support the roof in long-wall mining; a pack-wall.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The act of constructing, erecting, or establishing.
- n. The art of constructing edifices, or the practice of civil architecture.
- n. That which is built; a fabric or edifice constructed, as a house, a church, etc.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the act of constructing something
- n. a structure that has a roof and walls and stands more or less permanently in one place
- n. the occupants of a building
- n. the commercial activity involved in repairing old structures or constructing new ones
Examples
“GROSS: And in "Crying," it just keeps building and building� Mr. BURNETT: Yeah.”
“[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
“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.”
“©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*”
“The nation I'm most interested in building is America.”
“The nation I'm most interested in building is our own.”
“Great line: "The nation I'm most interested in building is our own.”
“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.”
“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”
“Tree Studios (1989) takes a rare look inside the title building in River North, a handsome Queen Anne and Arts & Crafts hybrid, back when it still housed an artist colony.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘building’.
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Words that start with B
butterfly, brain, broom, break, brick, brilliant, bubbles, balloons, bananas, bow, book, bunny and 37 more...
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Happy Therapy
Starting up a therapeutic service? Here are some words you can sprinkle throughout your brochure to sell your particular brand of change.
holistic, integration, nurture, exploration, acceptance, treatment, empower, supportive, teamwork, development, change, community and 14 more...
qroqqa 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). Aug 7, 2008