Word.ws English Dictionary

designing

designing is the present participle and gerund of design.

Meaning of design

Verb

design (third-person singular simple present designs, present participle designing, simple past and past participle designed)

  1. (transitive) To plan and carry out (a picture, work of art, construction etc.).
    • comments designed to chip away at my self-esteem
  2. (intransitive, obsolete) To plan (to do something).
    • The king designed to mount an expedition to the New World.
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To assign, appoint (something to someone); to designate.
    • he looks not below the Moon, but hath designed the regiment of sublunary affairs unto inferiour deputations.1646, Thomas Browne, chapter I, in Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], London: […] T[homas] H[arper] for Edward Dod, […], →OCLC, 1st book, page 10
  4. (obsolete, transitive) To mark out and exhibit; to designate; to indicate; to show; to point out; to appoint.
  5. To manifest requirements to be satisfied by an object or process for them to solve a problem.
    • We shall see / Justice design the victor's chivalry.1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to...

See all 12 meanings of design

Adjective

designing (comparative more designing, superlative most designing)

  1. artful; scheming
    • a designing man

Noun

designing (plural designings)

  1. A process of design.
    • Are these, the reality of things, a part of the great designings or are they not? If so, it would have been better, that there had been no such designings; if not, how is the theory of omnipotent design borne out?1829, Richard Carlile, The Lion

Forms of designing

Adjective
comparativemore designing
superlativemost designing
Noun
pluraldesignings

Words formed from designing

Questions about designing

What does designing mean?
Designing means artful; scheming.
What is designing the present participle and gerund of?
Designing is the present participle and gerund of design.
What part of speech is designing?
Designing can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near designing in the dictionary

  1. designest
  2. designeth
  3. designful
  4. designfully
  5. designfulness
  6. designing
  7. designingly
  8. designings
  9. designist
  10. designists
  11. designless

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: designing (page history and authors); design (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.

Last updated:

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