Word.ws English Dictionary

doing more harm than good

doing more harm than good is the present participle and gerund of do more harm than good.

Meaning of do more harm than good

Verb

do more harm than good (third-person singular simple present does more harm than good, present participle doing more harm than good, simple past did more harm than good, past participle done more harm than good)

  1. To make a situation worse, usually while trying to make it better.
    • Finally, it appears that Pius was asked by some persecuted Jews to avoid an explicit condemnation because it would do more harm than good2002, José M. Sánchez, Pius XII and the Holocaust: Understanding the Controversy, page 117

Questions about doing more harm than good

What is doing more harm than good the present participle and gerund of?
Doing more harm than good is the present participle and gerund of do more harm than good.

Words near doing more harm than good in the dictionary

  1. doing it brown
  2. doing it tough
  3. doing it up brown
  4. doing justice
  5. doing lunch
  6. doing more harm than good
  7. doing nothing
  8. doing numbers
  9. doing off
  10. doing one's bit
  11. doing one's business

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: doing more harm than good (page history and authors); do more harm than good (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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