Word.ws English Dictionary

defecating

defecating is the present participle and gerund of defecate.

Meaning of defecate

Verb

defecate (third-person singular simple present defecates, present participle defecating, simple past and past participle defecated)

  1. (intransitive) To excrete feces from one's bowels.
  2. (archaic, transitive) To pass (something) as excrement; to purge.
  3. (also, archaic, figuratively, transitive) To clean (something) of dregs, impurities, etc.; to purify.
    • [I]f vve defæcate the notion from materiality, […] it vvill be as hard to apprehend, as that an empty vviſh ſhould remove Mountains: a ſuppoſition vvhich if realized, vvould relieve Siſyphus.1661, Joseph Glanvill, chapter III, in The Vanity of Dogmatizing: Or Confidence in Opinions. […], London: […] E. C[otes] for Henry Eversden […], →OCLC, page 22

See all 4 meanings of defecate

Questions about defecating

What is defecating the present participle and gerund of?
Defecating is the present participle and gerund of defecate.

Words near defecating in the dictionary

  1. Defebaugh
  2. defecalgesiophobia
  3. defecate
  4. defecated
  5. defecates
  6. defecating
  7. defecation
  8. defecations
  9. defecator
  10. defecators
  11. defecatory

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: defecating (page history and authors); defecate (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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