Word.ws English Dictionary

bettering

bettering is the present participle and gerund of better.

Meaning of better

Verb (1)

better

  1. (auxiliary, colloquial, modal) Had better.
    • It's getting late. You better get on home.

Verb (2)

better (third-person singular simple present betters, present participle bettering, simple past and past participle bettered)

  1. (transitive) To improve.
    • attempts to better the lot of the refugees
  2. (intransitive) To become better; to improve.
  3. (transitive) To surpass in excellence; to exceed; to excel; to improve on.
    • He summed the whole thing up in a way that I couldn't possibly better.
    Synonyms:
    top
  4. (transitive) To give advantage to; to support; to advance the interest of.
    • Weapons more violent, when next we meet, / May serve to better us and worse our foes.1667, John Milton, “Book VI”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished...

See all 9 meanings of better

Noun

bettering (plural betterings)

  1. improvement

Forms of bettering

pluralbetterings

Origin of bettering

From Middle English beterynge; equivalent to better + -ing.

Words formed from bettering

Questions about bettering

What does bettering mean?
Bettering means improvement.
What is bettering the present participle and gerund of?
Bettering is the present participle and gerund of better.
What part of speech is bettering?
Bettering is a noun.
What is the plural of bettering?
The plural of bettering is betterings.

Words near bettering in the dictionary

  1. betterfying
  2. betterhood
  3. Betteridge
  4. Betteridge's Law
  5. Betteridge's law of headlines
  6. bettering
  7. bettering house
  8. betterings
  9. betterish
  10. betterment
  11. betterments

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bettering (page history and authors); better (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: “bettering.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bettering. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.