i.e. "The following days I was in a trance, the pain was so great that I was just functioning." (referring to the expression "I was just functioning." Thanks!)
2006-12-12 09:19:35 · 34 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
that person's body was on auto-pilot.
2006-12-12 09:21:01 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Just functioning means going through your daily routines in a mechanical way without emotion or thought. Do you know the feeling of having driven home through a complicated route and not actually thinking about the task or even being able to remember the journey with clarity? That is you 'just functioning'. The passage gives an added dimension of 'great pain' so that the writer was just functioning because the pain demanded all of his thought and emotion and possibly endurance.
2006-12-12 09:27:27 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
This statement is referring to a person in denial. When someone is in pain or is trying to avoid facing something, they go through their days in a daze. It is almost as if their bodies go through the routine of the day, but mentally they are not there. Also, the word function is not only useful in indicating this movement of the body, but not of the mind, because as soon as you hear "function," the reader associates it with being mechanical and emotionless.
2006-12-12 09:42:46 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Sounds like going through the motions, as if to be robotic, or automated. As if you - your self aren't really there but, your body is just doing the duties it has to perform to get you through until it can lay down for rest and recovery. So again, just functioning refers to motions of the body without real conscious thought, bare minimum duties that can be performed as if robotic, or habitual.
2006-12-12 09:27:55 · answer #4 · answered by BabyGirl~ 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Sounds like it means the speaker was just going through the motions. You know, like just breathing, eating and just kind of functioning like a robot, not really living life and truly feeling real emotions.
2006-12-12 09:22:25 · answer #5 · answered by Lost one 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
the person's life may have become such a routine that it didn't take much thought or effort to complete the everday tasks
or that they were so distracted by other thoughts that that is all they could focus on and not the things going on around them
or they were just zoned out and the same is true this time as it was in the explanation prior
2006-12-12 09:24:15 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
The more common phrase is "just BARELY functioning" but "just functioning" works too.
It means that the person is so bad off, they are barely able to do the minimum to stay moving (e.g. waking up, eating a little, maybe bathing, going to work - but barely).
2006-12-12 09:22:17 · answer #7 · answered by Indy Mind 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The expression is not really what I would call an idiom, but normally it means that you are aware that you are NOT totally living up to your full potential and at the present moment or in hindsight, things could have been carried out better.
Last year was hard. {I was barely making ends meet}....
2006-12-12 09:40:50 · answer #8 · answered by levelva 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I was just breathing, staying alive.
Because of the pain he was suffering in the following days he was just living as doing nothing.
2006-12-12 09:22:27 · answer #9 · answered by Curio-ous 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I was not in control of my body and everything anymore, I was just going on as if by instinct. The pain took all my concentration. I survived like a vegetable!!!
2006-12-12 09:22:11 · answer #10 · answered by saehli 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
All he could do was survive, and nothing more. Maslowe's hierarchy of needs illustrates the point. If you can barely even physically survive, you can forget about all the needs up the pyramid, like being loved, feeling fulfilled, etc.
2006-12-12 09:22:29 · answer #11 · answered by leothelionator 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋