Other forms: bearings
A bearing is a direction given as an angle, the number you steer by at sea or with a compass in a field. Due north is a bearing of 000, and the lighthouse sits on a bearing of 135 from the harbour mouth.
Bearings in the plural is where you are in the world: you get your bearings in a new town and lose your bearings in fog. A second and quieter bearing is a machine part, the ring of steel balls that lets a wheel or a shaft spin instead of grinding, as in ball bearing and wheel bearing. A third is the way a person holds themselves, so a man of military bearing stands very straight. To have a bearing on something is to be connected to it: what he earns has no bearing on the case. All of these are one idea wearing different coats, because a bearing carries something: a course you carry on, a weight carried on steel, the way you carry yourself.
1nounbearingA direction given as an angle measured from north.~14%
“The captain took a bearing on the headland before the fog closed in.”
2nounnewA sense of where you are or of how a new situation works.~2%
“Give me a minute to get my bearings before we set off.”
3nounmachineA machine part that lets something turn or slide smoothly.~75%
“The rattle at low speed turned out to be a worn wheel bearing.”
4nounpoiseThe way a person stands, moves and behaves.~2%
“She had the calm bearing of someone used to being obeyed.”
5nounrelevanceA connection to a matter; relevance.~7%
“His age has no bearing on whether he can do the job.”
synonyms: relevance
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 20 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense (6 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
bearing is a direction.
Bearing is bear plus -ing, and it runs back through Middle English beringe to Old English berende, the present participle of beran, to bear or carry, from Proto-Germanic berandz. Old English berende also meant fruitful, said of a tree that bears. Every modern sense still carries something.
Proto-Germanic
*berandz
Old English
berende — bearing; fruitful
Middle English
beringe
English, today
bearing
From Middle English beringe, berynge, berende, berande, berand, from Old English berende (“bearing; fruitful”) (also as synonym Old English bǣrende), from Proto-Germanic berandz, present participle of Proto-Germanic beraną (“to bear; carry”), equivalent to bear + ing.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA