Definition of "beginning" []

• The act or process of bringing or being brought into being; a start. (noun)
• The time when something begins or is begun: the beginning of the war. (noun)
• The place where something begins or is begun: at the beginning of the road. (noun)
• A source; an origin: What was the beginning of the dispute? (noun)
• The first part: The front matter is at the beginning of the book. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "It is here contended, on the other hand, that no conservation of any such variations could ever have given rise to the faintest beginning of any such moral perceptions; that by "Natural Selection" alone the maxim _fiat justitia, ruat coelum_ could never have been excogitated, still less have found a widespread acceptance; that it is impotent to suggest even an approach towards an explanation of the _first beginning_ of the idea of"
• "But while no hypothesis of development can neutralize or explain away the great geologic fact, that every true species had a beginning independently, apparently, of every preceding species, there was demonstrably a general progress, in the course of creation, from lower to higher forms, which seems scarce less fraught with important consequences to the natural theologian than this fact of _beginning_ itself."
• "He was near the end; nay, rather, near the beginning, according to the saying, _when a man hath finished then is he but at the beginning_. ["