Word.ws English Dictionary

debating

debating is the present participle and gerund of debate.

Meaning of debate

Verb

debate (third-person singular simple present debates, present participle debating, simple past and past participle debated)

  1. (ambitransitive, reciprocal) To participate in a debate; to dispute, argue, especially in a public arena.
    • "Debate me, coward!" snarled the completely normal intellectual.
    Synonyms:
    contend, canvass
  2. (intransitive, obsolete, reciprocal) To fight.
    • Well knew they both his person, sith of late / With him in bloudie armes they rashly did debate.1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.viii
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To engage in combat for; to strive for.
    • Volunteers […] thronged to serve under his banner, and the cause of religion was debated with the same ardour in Spain as on the plains of Palestine.1838, William H[ickling] Prescott, History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Boston, Mass.: American Stationers’ Company; John B....
  4. (transitive) To consider (to oneself), to think over, to attempt to decide
    • He was debating where he'd spend his holiday.

See all 9 meanings of debate

Noun

debating (countable and uncountable, plural debatings)

  1. The act of taking part in a debate.
    • If the war-minister, or all the ministers together, had had no debatings and dividings to look to; if they had had nobody but their master to obey; no families or particular individuals to conciliate or gratify; they would have acted upon the evidence1824-1826, William Cobbett, History of the Protestant Reformation

Forms of debating

pluraldebatings

Phrases with debating

Questions about debating

What does debating mean?
Debating means the act of taking part in a debate.
What is debating the present participle and gerund of?
Debating is the present participle and gerund of debate.
What part of speech is debating?
Debating is a noun.
What is the plural of debating?
The plural of debating is debatings.

Words near debating in the dictionary

  1. debates
  2. debatest
  3. debateth
  4. debatey
  5. debathification
  6. debating
  7. debatingly
  8. debatings
  9. debation
  10. debations
  11. debauch

Source and license

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