presence

plural presences · alternative præsence

1. countableuncountableThe fact or condition of being present, or of being within sight or call, or at hand.

   Any painter can benefit from the presence of a live model from which to draw.

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   Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations. It is easily earned repetition to state that Josephine St. Auban's was a presence not to be concealed.

   1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

2. countableuncountableThe part of space within one's immediate vicinity.

   Bob never said anything about it in my presence.

3. countableuncountableA quality of poise and effectiveness that enables a performer to achieve a close relationship with their audience.
4. countableuncountableA quality that sets an individual out from others; a quality that makes them noticed and/or admired even if they are not speaking or performing.

   Despite being less than five foot, she filled up the theatre with her stage presence.

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   Perrin Ferris succeeds in his equally demanding task of maintaining some semblance of presence while sharing the stage with a chronic upstager.

   1976 February 14, Don Shewey, “Haunted Host (review)”, in Gay Community News, volume 3, number 33, page 14

   Actors famous for their legendary presence, such as Marlon Brando or Charles Laughton, were experienced by fellow actors as self-contained (Callow, 2012). Again, it is difficult to discuss the qualities of “presence” in terms that are transindividual rather than individual, because the star system is structured to focus on performances by individuals already placed in the charisma-inducing position of cynosure. / One counter-argument is that physical theatre practices are potentially democratic because they focus on “presentness”, rather than “presence” as associated with stardom and its magical, fetishistic overtones.

   2023, Barry King, Performing Identity, page 93

5. countableuncountableSomething (as a spirit) felt or believed to be present.

   I'm convinced that there was a presence in that building that I can't explain, which led to my heroic actions.

6. countableuncountableA company's business activity in a particular market.
7. archaiccountableuncountableAn assembly of great persons.
8. countableuncountableThe state of being closely focused on the here and now, not distracted by irrelevant thoughts.
9. countableuncountableaudioSynonym of room tone.

   Synonyms: room tone

10. abbreviationcountableellipsisuncountableEllipsis of presence chamber.

present singular third person presences · participle present presencing · participle past presenced · past presenced · alternative præsence

1. ambitransitivehuman sciencesTo make or become present.

   Benner (1984) captures the essence of this when she describes presencing as the art of 'being with' a person without the need to be 'doing to' the person.

   2011, Brendan McCormack, Tanya McCance, Person-centred Nursing: Theory and Practice

   4 more examples

   Presence means: the constant abiding that approaches man, reaches him, is extended to him. But what is this source of this extending reach to which the present belongs as presencing, insofar as there is presence? True, man always remains approached by the presencing of something actually present without explicitly heeding presencing itself.

   1972, Joan Stambaugh, Time and being (lecture), translation of original by Martin Heidegger, page 13

   Within a completely neutral horizon, the primordial continuous stream of experience is presenced without interruption. As this time, the past and future have no meaning apart from the now in which they are presenced.

   1985, David Edward Shaner, The Bodymind Experience in Japanese Buddhism: A Phenomenological Study of Kūkai and Dōgen, page 59

   Just as the bread and butter can be presenced as more than just the bread and the butter, so baking a loaf of bread can be more than just the baking, the baker, and the bread.

   1998, H. Peter Steeves, Founding Community: A Phenomenological-Ethical Inquiry, page 59

   2005, James Phillips, Heidegger's Volk: Between National Socialism and Poetry, Stanford University Press, →ISBN (paperback), page 118, From the overtaxing of the regime's paranoiac classifications and monitoring of the social field, Heidegger was to await in vain the presencing of that which is present, the revelation of the Being of beings in its precedence to governmental control.