March 19, 2015 - 01:13
Belonging
Oxford English Dictionary
1. Circumstances connected with a person or thing; relations with another person or thing.
4. A thing connected with, forming a part, appendage, or accessory of another.
5. The fact of appertaining, relationship. esp. a person's membership in, and acceptance by, a group or society
Your Dictionary
- Acceptance as a natural member or part: a sense of belonging.
- Personal items that one owns; possessions.
Urban Dictionary
- Acceptance as a natural member or part: a sense of belonging.
- Personal items that one owns; possessions.
Retreat
Oxford English Dictionary
An act of leaving or escaping from a difficult or dangerous situation; a movement away from an attitude, idea, agreement, etc., esp. one that is being challenged or causing difficulties. Also: the action of doing this.
Your Dictionary
Retreat is the act of giving up and withdrawing or a time away in a quiet and secluded place where you can relax.
Urban Dictionary
A routine (usually annual) luxurious vacation taken at the company's expense by equity owners or senior executives for the purposes of indulging in golf, fine dining and other forms of entertainment (legitimate or otherwise) under the pretense (mostly for the benefit of their spouses and employees) of working and for other business purposes.
Interaction
Oxford English Dictionary
Reciprocal action; action or influence of persons or things on each other. spec. in Physics, referring to the action between atomic and subatomic particles.
Your Dictionary
The definition of interaction is an action which is influenced by other actions.
Urban Dictionary
1. The act or process of interacting.
2. The state of undergoing interaction
I chose these three words, because these were words that came to mind while reading Audre Lorde's Outside. There is always the looming question of whether or not we belong in the environments we're in, and often times if I feel uncomfortable with the interactions being made I see if retreating to a more comfortable situation is possible. The etymology of "belong":Old Saxon bilang , Middle Dutch belangh; its primary notion was "apparently ‘equally long, corresponding in length,’ whence ‘running alongside of, parallel to, going along with, accompanying as a property or attribute." The etymology of "retreat": "Anglo-Norman and Old French, Middle French retrait, retret (masculine) act of withdrawing (late 12th cent.), ebb (late 12th cent. in Anglo-Norman), a blow from a weapon in single combat (late 12th cent.; compare Old French, Middle French cop de retrait blow executed by pulling back one's weapon" (OED).