Word.ws English Dictionary

acting on

acting on is the present participle and gerund of act on.

Meaning of act on

Verb

act on (third-person singular simple present acts on, present participle acting on, simple past and past participle acted on)

  1. To act decisively on the basis of information received or deduced.
    • The policeman decided to act on the tip from his informant.
  2. To act accordingly to a (usually sublimated) desire or impulse.
    • He keeps telling me about wanting to make a move, but he hasn't worked up to acting on it yet.
  3. To take action against something.
    • World leaders have repeatedly stated that we must act on climate change.
  4. To affect something.
    • Different drugs act on different parts of our body in many different ways.
  5. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see act, on.

Questions about acting on

What is acting on the present participle and gerund of?
Acting on is the present participle and gerund of act on.

Words near acting on in the dictionary

  1. actineon
  2. acting
  3. acting a fool
  4. acting charades
  5. acting chicken
  6. acting on
  7. acting one's age
  8. acting one's age, not one's shoe size
  9. acting out
  10. acting possum
  11. acting the fool

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: acting on (page history and authors); act on (page history and authors). 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.

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Cite this entry: “acting on.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/acting_on. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.