Word.ws English Dictionary

blackmailing

blackmailing is the present participle and gerund of blackmail.

Meaning of blackmail

Verb

blackmail (third-person singular simple present blackmails, present participle blackmailing, simple past and past participle blackmailed)

  1. (transitive) To extort money or favors from (a person) by exciting fears of injury other than bodily harm, such as injury to reputation, distress of mind, false accusation, etc.
    • He blackmailed a businesswoman by threatening to expose an alleged fraud.
  2. (Kenya) To speak ill of someone; to defame someone.

See all 7 meanings of blackmail

Noun

blackmailing (countable and uncountable, plural blackmailings)

  1. The act of one who blackmails.
    • All the materials, therefore, existed for an interminable series of hagglings, bargainings, and blackmailings.1934, Winston Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times (book 2, page 51)

Forms of blackmailing

pluralblackmailings

Questions about blackmailing

What does blackmailing mean?
Blackmailing means the act of one who blackmails.
What is blackmailing the present participle and gerund of?
Blackmailing is the present participle and gerund of blackmail.
What part of speech is blackmailing?
Blackmailing is a noun.
What is the plural of blackmailing?
The plural of blackmailing is blackmailings.

Words near blackmailing in the dictionary

  1. blackmailee
  2. blackmailees
  3. blackmailer
  4. blackmailers
  5. Blackmailer’s Charter
  6. blackmailing
  7. blackmailings
  8. blackmails
  9. blackmaily
  10. blackman
  11. Blackmans

Source and license

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