You can picture thinking as a mind at work. Something is set in front of it — a problem, a choice, a question — and the mind turns that thing over. Two things come out of the work. One is the work itself: what you are doing when you sit down and go over a problem. The other is what the work leaves behind: the set of ideas and opinions you now hold about it. English uses the same word for both, which is why thinking can mean an hour at the kitchen table and also mean a government's position on aid. One more step out, and the word describes a person: someone who does that work often is a thinking person.
From the word’s history
Wiktionary records thinking as Middle English thinking, formed from think plus -ing. The -ing ending packs an action up into something you can name, which is why one form covers both the act of thinking and what that act leaves behind.
Wiktionary 記 thinking 來自中古英語 thinking，就是 think 加上 -ing。-ing 把一個動作包成一樣可以指稱的東西，這正好說明為什麼同一個字既能指「動腦的過程」，也能指「想出來的那套看法」。
Wiktionary, 'thinking' (noun, etymology 1): 'From Middle English thinking, thynkynge, thenkyng, equivalent to think + -ing.' — supplied in evidence packet, source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:726807543
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原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
thinkingnoun詞源 1/ˈθɪŋkɪŋ/
- 1
The action or process of using one's mind to consider or reason about something.
- 2
A thought.
- What is your thinking on this subject?
- But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure. Yet this is the level of organisation that does the actual thinking—and is, presumably, the seat of consciousness.
這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。