Word.ws English Dictionary

deserving

Syllables: de·serv·ing/dɪˈzɜːvɪŋ/US/dɪˈzɝvɪŋ/

deserving adjective: worthy of reward or praise; meritorious. Also the present participle and gerund of deserve.

Adjective

deserving (comparative more deserving, superlative most deserving)

  1. Worthy of reward or praise; meritorious.
    • the deserving poor
  2. Meriting, worthy (reward, punishment etc.)
    • In the midst of a world war many centenaries pass unnoticed, but one which fell on August 2, namely, the opening of Fenchurch Street station, is deserving of record.1941 September, “Notes and News: The London & Blackwall Cable Railway”, in Railway Magazine, pages 424–425

Noun

deserving (plural deservings)

  1. desert, merit
    • I here understand that value which every man puts upon his own deservings from the publick1711, Jonathan Swift, The Examiner, Number 30

Also used as

deserving is also the present participle and gerund of deserve.

deserving meaning in Hindi, Telugu, Gujarati and Tagalog

deserving in Hindi

worthy of reward or praise
पात्र pātra, योग्य yogya

deserving in Telugu

అర్హుడు

deserving in Gujarati

લાયક

deserving in Tagalog

worthy of reward or praise
tampat
meriting, worthy
tampat

Examples of deserving in a sentence

  • I can think of no more deserving cause.
  • It’s hard to think of two pueri aeterni who are more deserving of a verbal walloping.
  • Like all public expenditure, Access for All has to compete with other deserving demands.

All 27 example sentences with deserving

Antonyms of deserving

Forms of deserving

Adjective
comparativemore deserving
superlativemost deserving
Noun
pluraldeservings

Words formed from deserving

Phrases with deserving

Words that rhyme with deserving

Questions about deserving

What does deserving mean?
Deserving means worthy of reward or praise; meritorious.
What is deserving in Hindi?
Deserving in Hindi is पात्र (pātra), योग्य (yogya). See Deserving meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is deserving?
Deserving can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce deserving?
Deserving is pronounced /dɪˈzɝvɪŋ/ (US).

Words near deserving in the dictionary

  1. deserver
  2. deservers
  3. deserves
  4. deservest
  5. deserveth
  6. deserving
  7. deserving poor
  8. deservingly
  9. deservingness
  10. deservings
  11. desethyl

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: deserving (page history and authors); deserving (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); deserving (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-deserving.wav.

Cite this entry: “deserving.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/deserving. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.