a1382 Bible (Wycliffite, E.V.) (Bodl. 959) (1965) Ecclus. xl. 30 Þe lijf of hym is not in þe thenking of lijflode.

a1425 Edward, Duke of York Master of Game (Digby) Prol. 13 What shalbe in euery sesoun moste durable and, to my thynkynge,..oftenest most desportfull of all games.

?1482 J. Kay tr. G. Caoursin Siege of Rhodes That hyt was Impossible after hys thynkyng to fynde in all the world suche instrumentes of werre.

1566 J. Phillips Exam. & Confession certaine Wytches sig.Aiiii^v A syluer whystle (to her thinking) about his neck, and a peyre of hornes on his heade.

1599 T. Dallam Diary in J. T. Bent Early Voy. Levant (1893) i. 11 In my thinkinge it seemed not to be above 3 myles.

1600 W. Shakespeare Henry IV, Pt. 2 v. v. 106 I heard a bird so sing, Whose musique, to my thinking, pleasde the King. View more context for this quotation

1653 T. Ford Singing of Psalmes 116 To my thinking, there is not a more lively resemblance of heaven upon earth, then a company of godly Christians singing a Psalm together.

1703 T. D'Urfey Old Mode & New iv. ii. 58 I like my Bed fellow a great deal better than I did; for to my thinking she's very like my dear Cousin Fred.

c1775 E. Burke Addr. to King in Wks. (1818) IX. 177 In..opposition to the..confirmed sentiments and habits of thinking of an whole people.

1854 Eclectic Mag. Apr. 511/2 He was heroic according to the thinking of his age, which considered heroism as being constituted solely of unflinching courage.

a1878 B. Taylor Stud. German Lit. (1879) 143 Frauenlob, the last, and, to my thinking, the poorest of the Minnesingers.

1920 D. H. Lawrence Women in Love iv. 52 You are perfectly beautiful, a thousand times more beautiful than ever she is or was, and to my thinking, a thousand times more beautifully dressed.

1948 A. C. Kinsey et al. Sexual Behavior Human Male xvii. 558 Heterosexual incest occurs more frequently in the thinking of clinicians and social workers than it does in actual performance.

1974 Times Lit. Suppl. 1 Mar. 197/1 The central elements in the military thinking of this period were the tank and the aeroplane.

2002 Jrnl. Soc. Archit. Historians 61 589/3 To his thinking, a ramp would have impinged on Charles Platt's English neo-baroque Architecture Building.

?1750 S. Hammond New Introd. Learning Mind, thinking Faculty.

1800 Med. & Physical Jrnl. 3 281 According to the laws of the thinking faculty, the understanding and reason.

1864 F. C. Bowen Treat. Logic i. 2 The Thinking or Elaborative faculty,—i.e. the Understanding.

2007 Hindustan Times (Nexis) 7 Dec. Just in case you're still tempted to seek out this slugfest, do leave your thinking faculties back at home before stepping in.

1842 E. A. Poe in Graham's Mag. Jan. 68/2 With the increase of the thinking-material comes the desire..of abandoning particulars for masses.

1971 B. de Ferranti Living with Computer ix. 80 The amount of ‘thinking material’ in the brains of a number of fishes was doubled by transplantation from other fishes.

2004 Birmingham Post (Nexis) 22 Nov. 10 Much of the exhibition is quite tough and certainly art as thinking material.

1897 Q. Rev. Apr. 348 That remarkable series of reading-parties (or more truly of thinking-parties).

1843 N. P. Willis in Graham's Mag. Oct. 188/2 The saddle is my favorite thinking-place.

1883 R. Jefferies Story Heart 74 This..was a favourite thinking-place.

2007 Stratford (Ont.) Beacon Herald (Nexis) 14 Dec. 12 Just behind my house there was a beautiful rolling piece of real estate that I claimed as my own private thinking place.

1852 Biblical Repertory Apr. 269 Theologically considered, the thinking process is God, and the Trinity is its three-fold form.

1899 T. C. Allbutt et al. Syst. Med. VII. 423 These kinæsthetic images..play only a small part in thinking processes.

1997 J. A. Jerome in R. C. Ward Found. Osteopathic Med. xvii. 209/1 Aaron Beck describes negative schemas as a learned maladaptive thinking process that often leads to depression.

1853 H. D. Thoreau in Putnam's Monthly Mag. Jan. 57/2 When every house..will have not only its sleeping rooms, and dining room, and talking room or parlor, but its thinking room also.

1923 C. Morley Parsons' Pleasure ii. 103 Prithee (cried No Sho, the young poet) Shut out the baby: Don't let her come into my thinking-room.

2007 Washington Post (Nexis) 22 Apr. w52 I was going to make this room into..a thinking room where she contemplates what she needs to do.

1959 Amer. Econ. Rev. 49 277 Direct attempts to investigate the human processes by thinking-aloud techniques and to reproduce in computer programs the processes observed in human subjects.

1989 Lit. & Ling. Computing 4 1/1 Thinking aloud data can give a valuable ‘window’ on the underlying mental processes.

2000 Techn. Communication (Nexis) Aug. 311 Thinking-aloud studies of people using software have been and still are important for interface designers.

1911 ‘Sepharial’ Kabala of Numbers I. vii. 75 The thinking-box of a scientific man [sc. Newton].

1915 J. Galsworthy Bit o' Love I. 10 He'm in his thinkin' box.

1951 N. Annan Leslie Stephen i. 29 Stephen wanted to appear..as an athlete who incidentally owned a competent thinking-box.

1997 J. Seabrook Deeper ii. 47 After five years of using my computer only as a writing machine, I had grown into the habit of thinking of it as an extension of my own mind, my own private thinking box.

1846 Ladies' Repository Jan. 7/2 If you happen to call upon him when his thinking-cap sits uncomfortably upon his brow..you may expect a smiling countenance.

1874 E. Coues Birds Northwest 527 Startled in his retreat while his thinking-cap is on, he [sc. the bittern] seems dazed, like one suddenly aroused from a deep sleep.

1903 Daily Chron. 21 Jan. 5/4 It is satisfactory to know that the Post Office Department has its ‘thinking-cap’ on.

2002 Bliss June 56/3 We asked the boys to put on their thinking caps and dig deep into their minds to work out what it can all mean.

1927 Girl Guide Gaz. Feb. 33/1 At the World Conference in America it was suggested by one of the French delegates that there should be an international ‘Thinking Day’, on which the Guides of all our different countries should remember each other.

1977 Guider July 327/2 The colours of the Retford Unit of Ranger Guides were dedicated on Thinking Day this year.

2002 T. M. Proctor On My Honour 114 Members of the movement..were encouraged to celebrate great events in the lives of the Baden-Powells... Olave and Robert's joint birthday of February 22 even became the official Guide holiday of ‘Thinking Day’, still celebrated each year with a grand ceremony at Westminster Abbey.

2005 Brownie Feb. 10/2 For World Thinking Day this year Brown Owl asked us all to dress up in the traditional costume of a country we'd visited and give a little talk about it.

1932 Times Herald (N.Y.) 13 Sept. 3/3 ‘Thinking distance’ is the number of feet your car will travel..from the moment your brain flashes ‘stop’ until your muscles and nerves coordinate, and you put your foot on the brake.

1947 Highway Code (recto rear cover) Think in terms of overall stopping distance... Thinking distance = Distance travelled before driver reacts.

1995 J. Miller & M. Stacey Driving Instructor's Handbk. (ed. 8) vii. 214 Thinking distance is based on the assumption that an average reaction time in normal driving situations..is approximately ⅔ of a second.

1849 C. Lanman Lett. Alleghany Mts. i. 15 Bout four years ago, it came into my thinking mug that there must be plenty of gold in the bed of Coosa creek.

1850 E. Robinson Greek & Eng. Lexicon of New Test. (rev.ed.) 254/1 A thinking out, invention, device.

1934 H. G. Wells Exper. in Autobiogr. II. ix. 654 I was using my prestige and possibilities as an imaginative writer, to do the thinking-out of this problem of human will and government, under fantastic forms.

1946 R. G. Collingwood Idea of Hist. 196 This thinking-out of the meaning of a concept is philosophy.

2000 Philosophy 75 342 His thinking is not the thinking out of a theoretical problem, but the thinking up of an audience-pleasing sequence of phrases, sentence, anecdotes, sentiments, etc.

1890 B. Hall Turnover Club i. 17 Then he uses this man to play thinking parts, like the Bleeding Officer and the two armies.

1908 Greenroom Bk. 667 He made his professional debut in 1867 in a ‘thinking part’.

1995 Films in Rev. Nov. 87/2 Young Jack was given no lines to speak, a role he later jokingly described as a ‘thinking part’.

1837 B. D. Walsh tr. Aristophanes Clouds i. ii, in Comedies 289 I am come To be a Scholar in the Thinking-shop.

1890 Spectator 19 Apr. It turned Oxford into an aristocratic boarding-school from a democratic thinking-shop.

1998 Business Line (Nexis) 18 Sept. Strange that the Congress(I) at its Panchmarhi thinking-shop should have again revived the slogan of socialistic pattern of society.

1910 Philos. Rev. 19 365 Knowledge is finally the result of a ‘thinking through’ of the intuition of perception.

1971 Listener 16 Dec. 838/2 An inadequate thinking-through of what those fine phrases will mean in practice.

2004 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 11 Mar. 27/1 It became James's practice to produce detailed preliminary thinkings-through of his material.

1668 J. Dryden Sr Martin Mar-all v. 53 I'll put you upon something, give me but a thinking time.

1677 Counterfeit Bridegroom v. iii. 55 I'le give thee a looking and a thinking time, that is but fair.

1774 T. Horde Damon & Phebe i. 14 P: Cruel duty!—Cupid now—D: Will no thinking time allow.

1855 A. B. Warner My Brother's Keeper xxvii. 278 Rosalie found it hard to get used to her new way of life. She loved its quietness with all her heart, but it gave her more thinking time than was quite good for her.

2001 Daily Tel. 24 July 19/8 Liars..tend to pause before speaking, to give themselves thinking time.

1668 J. Dryden Sr Martin Mar-all iii. 27 As a whiff of Tobacco..[used] in the midst of a discourse, for a thinking while.

1678 T. D'Urfey Fool turn'd Critick iii. iii. 30 Pox on him, h'as given me another thinking while.

1606 W. Burton tr. Erasmus Seven Dialogues sig. N3 One and the same soule effecteth diuers actions, and in respect of those it hath diuers surnames (as it were) as a thinking soule, a sensible soule, an vnderstanding soule, &c.

1679 J. Dryden & N. Lee Oedipus iii. 39 A thinking soul is punishment enough.

1709 R. Steele & J. Addison Tatler No. 111. ⁋1 What was the proper Employment of a thinking Being?

1756 T. Amory Life John Buncle I. 317 This partner I want in my solitude could be Miss Melmoth, one of the wisest and most discreet of women; a thinking bloom, and good-humour itself in a human figure.

1861 Trans. Enthnol. Soc. 1 192 The composite nature of man, as an animal and social, a moral and religious, as well as an intellectual and thinking being.

1886 Mind 11 481 A is not merely a perceiving, but also a thinking creature.

1964 Hispania 47 251/1 Life is bitter because man, though a thinking animal, is a helpless one.

1973 Jrnl. Hist. Ideas 34 644 Nature is subtle, but nowhere does Descartes say that it is cunning—a thinking being.

2003 National Geographic July Geographica, (caption) 1966. ‘Shakey’, a ‘thinking’ robot that can plan its own actions, is born at the Stanford Research Institute.

1732 M. Green Grotto 57 The thinking sculpture helps to raise Deep thoughts, the genii of the place.

1661 J. Glanvill Vanity of Dogmatizing iii. 22 If we defaecate the notion from materiality, and abstract quantity, locality and all kind of corporeity from it, and represent it to our thoughts..as the admir'd Des-Cartes expresses it, une chose qui pense, as a thinking substance.

1690 J. Locke Ess. Humane Understanding xii. 73 It can have no other Ideas of sensible Qualities, than what come from without by the Senses; nor any Ideas of other kind of Operations of a thinking Substance, than what it finds in it self.

1711 B. Mandeville Treat. Hypochondriack & Hysterick Passions 134 The Spirits that are the Internuncii, between the immaterial Thinking substance, and those parts are none of the coursest.

1760 L. Sterne Life Tristram Shandy II. xix. 167 The great difference between the most acute and the most obtuse understanding,—was from no original sharpness or bluntness of one thinking substance above or below another.

1892 J. Tait Mind in Matter (ed. 3) 99 The etherialised medium of force, which probably connects the brain with the thinking-substance.

2006 U.S. News & World Rep. (Nexis) 23 Oct. Descartes, whose most enduring contribution to modern thought was his argument that reality consisted of two entirely different substances: material substance (res extensa) and thinking substance (res cogitans).

1880 Q. Rev. Oct. 415 Christendom..is far enough as yet from having been replaced by the Utopian Thinkingdom (Cogitantenthum), to which one of the modern German apostles of materialism..looks forward.