Word.ws English Dictionary

conferring

conferring is the present participle and gerund of confer.

Meaning of confer

Verb

confer (third-person singular simple present confers, present participle conferring, simple past and past participle conferred)

  1. (transitive) To grant as a possession; to bestow.
    • The college has conferred an honorary degree upon the visiting Prime Minister.
    Synonyms:
    afford
  2. (intransitive) To talk together, to consult, discuss; to collogue.
    • They were in a huddle, conferring about something.
    Synonyms:
    palaver
  3. (obsolete) To compare.
    • The Newe Testament ... Conferred diligently with the Greke, and best approued translations.1557 (book title)
  4. (obsolete, transitive) To bring together; to collect, gather.
  5. (obsolete) To contribute; to conduce.
    • The closeness and compactness of the parts resting together doth much confer to the strength of the union.1665, Joseph Glanvill, Scepsis Scientifica

See all 6 meanings of confer

Noun

conferring (plural conferrings)

  1. The act of one who confers.
    • His critics ask him if he expects to prevent the conferees in the Conference from talking to one another in the Metropolitan Club and from then coming to the Conference's open sessions merely to register the results of their secret conferrings.1921, Asia: Journal of the American Asiatic Association

Forms of conferring

pluralconferrings

Phrases with conferring

Questions about conferring

What does conferring mean?
Conferring means the act of one who confers.
What is conferring the present participle and gerund of?
Conferring is the present participle and gerund of confer.
What part of speech is conferring?
Conferring is a noun.
What is the plural of conferring?
The plural of conferring is conferrings.

Words near conferring in the dictionary

  1. conferrences
  2. conferrer
  3. conferrers
  4. conferrest
  5. conferreth
  6. conferring
  7. conferrings
  8. conferruminate
  9. conferruminated
  10. conferruminates
  11. conferruminating

Source and license

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