damaging
verb
Form of damage , present participle of damage.
Simple meaning
To impair the soundness, goodness, or value of.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
damihjingSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈdæmɪdʒɪŋ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
present participle of damage
To impair the soundness, goodness, or value of; to harm or cause destruction.
present participle of damage
To remove a damaged or unsalable item from the sales floor for processing.
present participle of damage
Suffer or be susceptible to damage
present participle of damage
Inflict damage upon
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To impair the soundness, goodness, or value of; to harm or cause destruction.
Used this way, damaging is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It carries more force than its gentler alternatives. It turns up most in personal or emotional discussion and literature or storytelling contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Strong
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Everyday but emotionally strong
Where it naturally appears
- Personal/emotional discussion
- Literature/storytelling
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The occurrence of a change for the worse.
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What Does It Mean Here?
Words can change meaning depending on context.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.