Word.ws English Dictionary

doing for

doing for is the present participle and gerund of do for.

Meaning of do for

Verb

do for (third-person singular simple present does for, present participle doing for, simple past did for, past participle done for)

  1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see do, for.
    • What can I do for you?
  2. (UK, transitive) To doom; to bring about the demise of someone; to injure or harm someone.
    • Smoking did for him in the end.
    Synonyms:
    damage, wound, abuse, annoy, bewound, damnify, dere, do damage to, do ill, do violence to
  3. (UK, transitive) To prosecute someone for a criminal offence.
    • He was done for murder.
  4. (UK, dated, intransitive) To work as a domestic servant for.
    • I've left my key in my office in Manchester, my family are at Bournemouth, and the old woman who does for me goes home at nine o'clock.1915, Frank Thomas Bullen, Recollections
  5. (slang) To tire; to exhaust.
    • All this running has done for me.

Questions about doing for

What is doing for the present participle and gerund of?
Doing for is the present participle and gerund of do for.

Words near doing for in the dictionary

  1. doing cheetah flips
  2. doing credit
  3. doing down
  4. doing drugs
  5. doing exactly what it says on the tin
  6. doing for
  7. doing good
  8. doing gooseberry
  9. doing ill
  10. doing in
  11. doing it

Source and license

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