acting
/ˈæk.tɪŋ/
acting adjective: temporarily assuming the duties or authority of another person when they are unable to do their job. Also the present participle and gerund of act.
Adjective
acting (not comparable)
- Temporarily assuming the duties or authority of another person when they are unable to do their job.
- The Acting Minister must sign Executive Council documents in a Minister's absence.
- The CEO is currently in a hospital. The CFO is acting CEO in the meantime.
Noun
acting (countable and uncountable, plural actings)
- An action or deed.
- […] he does so much magnifie Nature and her Actings in all this material World, as he gives just cause of suspicion that he hath made her a kind of joynt Deess with God in the Affairs thereof;1685, Herbert Croft, Some Animadversions upon a book intituled, The Theory of the Earth, London, Preface
- […] I desire this Account may pass with them, rather for a Direction to themselves to act by, than a History of my actings, seeing it may not be of one farthing value to them to note what became of me.1722, Daniel Defoe, “A Journal of the Plague Year”, in et al., London: E. Nutt, page 10
- Something done by a party—so called to avoid confusion with the legal senses of deed and action.
- Pretending.
- The occupation of an actor.
Also used as
acting is also the present participle and gerund of act.
acting meaning in Hindi, Malayalam, Gujarati and Odia
acting in Hindi
- temporarily assuming the duties or authority
- कार्यकारी kāryakārī, कार्यवाहक kāryavāhak
- occupation of an actor
- अभिनय abhinay
acting in Malayalam
- temporarily assuming the duties or authority
- ബദലായ badalāya
- occupation of an actor
- അഭിനയം abhinayaṁ
acting in Gujarati
- temporarily assuming the duties or authority
- કાર્યકારી kāryakārī
acting in Odia
- ଅଭିନଯ଼
More languagesFewer languages
- acting in Nepali
- अभिनय
- acting in Arabic
- تَمْثِيل tamṯīl
- acting in Indonesian
- akting
- acting in Persian
- بازیگری bâzigari
- acting in Thai
- รักษาการ rák-sǎa-gaan
Examples of acting in a sentence
- Amy Gleason is the acting administrator of the US DOGE Service, the agency that houses the temporary Department of Government Efficiency, a White House official told CNN on Tuesday.2025 February 25, Kaitlan Collins and Tierney Sneed, “White House reveals who DOGE acting administrator is”, in CNN:
- Boyle’s theory explains the whole range of God’s actings in the world, those things that injure man as well as those which advantage him.1974, J. R. Jacob, “Robert Boyle and Subversive Religion in the Early Restoration”, in Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British...
Forms of acting
| plural | actings |
|---|
Origin of acting
From act + -ing.
Words formed from acting
Phrases with acting
Words that rhyme with acting
Questions about acting
- What does acting mean?
- Acting means temporarily assuming the duties or authority of another person when they are unable to do their job.
- What is acting in Hindi?
- Acting in Hindi is कार्यकारी (kāryakārī), कार्यवाहक (kāryavāhak), अभिनय (abhinay). See Acting meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use acting in a sentence?
- Amy Gleason is the acting administrator of the US DOGE Service, the agency that houses the temporary Department of Government Efficiency, a White House official told CNN on Tuesday.
- What part of speech is acting?
- Acting can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce acting?
- Acting is pronounced /ˈæk.tɪŋ/.
Words near acting in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: acting (page history and authors); acting (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); acting (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-acting.ogg.
Cite this entry: “acting.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/acting. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.