Word.ws English Dictionary

deprecating

deprecating is the present participle and gerund of deprecate.

Meaning of deprecate

Verb

deprecate (third-person singular simple present deprecates, present participle deprecating, simple past and past participle deprecated)

  1. (transitive) To express disapproval of, protest or plead against.
    • They deprecated the attempt to deny aid to homeless people.
    Antonyms:
    recommend, endorse
  2. (transitive) To belittle, depreciate.
    • He deprecates any praise of his own merits.
  3. (transitive) To declare something obsolescent; to recommend against a function, technique, command, etc. that still works but has been replaced.
    • The 'bold' tag has been deprecated in favour of the 'strong' tag.
  4. (archaic, transitive) To pray against.
    • And in deprecating of Evil, we make an humble Acknowledgement of Guilt; and of God’s Juſtice in chaſtizing, as well as Clemency, in ſparing the Guilty.1701, Nehemiah Grew, Cosmologia Sacra, London: W. Rogers, S. Smith, and B. Walford, page 126
  5. (archaic, transitive) To regret deeply.

Adjective

deprecating (comparative more deprecating, superlative most deprecating)

  1. In manner that deprecates; insulting; belittling.
    • She looked at him with a deprecating smile on her face.
    • He raised his hand with a deprecating gesture.

Forms of deprecating

comparativemore deprecating
superlativemost deprecating

Words formed from deprecating

Questions about deprecating

What does deprecating mean?
Deprecating means in manner that deprecates; insulting; belittling.
What is deprecating the present participle and gerund of?
Deprecating is the present participle and gerund of deprecate.
What part of speech is deprecating?
Deprecating is an adjective.

Words near deprecating in the dictionary

  1. depravity
  2. deprecable
  3. deprecate
  4. deprecated
  5. deprecates
  6. deprecating
  7. deprecatingly
  8. deprecation
  9. deprecations
  10. deprecative
  11. deprecatively

Source and license

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