Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Beginning

Beginning ({not transcribed}) , noun

1.
The act of doing that which begins anything; commencement of an action, state, or space of time; entrance into being or upon a course; the first act, effort, or state of a succession of acts or states.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. — Gen. i. 1
2.
That which begins or originates something; the first cause; origin; source.
I am... the beginning and the ending. — Rev. i. 8
3.
That which is begun; a rudiment or element.
Mighty things from small beginnings grow. — Dryden
4.
Enterprise.
To hinder our beginnings. — Shakespeare