Word.ws English Dictionary

de-escalating

de-escalating is the present participle and gerund of de-escalate.

Meaning of de-escalate

Verb

de-escalate (third-person singular simple present de-escalates, present participle de-escalating, simple past and past participle de-escalated)

  1. (ambitransitive) To decrease in intensity or magnitude.
    • We asked authors to consider two scenarios imaginable in the next five years. In the first scenario, a minor skirmish escalated into a multiweek maritime blockade of Taiwan by China. Although several dozen members of the Chinese and Taiwanese military were killed, U.S. intervention eventually...2026 January 19, Bonnie S. Glaser, Zack Cooper, “A Failed Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Would Be Disastrous for Xi Jinping”, in Foreign Policy, archived from the original on 19 Jan 2026, Analysis
    Synonyms:
    disintensify, defuse

Questions about de-escalating

What is de-escalating the present participle and gerund of?
De-escalating is the present participle and gerund of de-escalate.

Words near de-escalating in the dictionary

  1. de-equitizes
  2. de-equitizing
  3. de-escalate
  4. de-escalated
  5. de-escalates
  6. de-escalating
  7. de-escalation
  8. de-escalations
  9. de-escalatory
  10. de-ess
  11. de-essed

Source and license

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