enabling
enabling is the present participle and gerund of enable.
Meaning of enable
Verb
enable (third-person singular simple present enables, present participle enabling, simple past and past participle enabled)
- To make somebody able (to do, or to be, something); to give sufficient ability or power to do or to be; to give strength or ability to.
- And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 1 Timothy i:12
- To affirm; to make firm and strong.
- To qualify or approve for some role or position; to render sanction or authorization to; to confirm suitability for.
- This was widely interpreted to mean that slavery was once more firmly illegal in England. However, the "positive law" mentioned–i.e., a direct law specifically enabling slavery–existed in many British colonies (although not all), since these colonies had a degree of freedom to write their own law...2018 December 1, Drachinifel, 3:21 from the start, in Anti-Slavery Patrols - The West Africa Squadron, archived from the original on 29 Nov 2024
- To yield the opportunity or provide the possibility for something; to provide with means, opportunities, and the like.
- Temperance gives Nature her full play, and enables her to exert herself in all her force and vigor.1711 October 23 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison], “FRIDAY, October 13, 1711”, in The Spectator, number 195; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume...
- Synonyms:
- allow
- To imply or tacitly confer excuse for an action or a behavior.
- His parents enabled him to go on buying drugs.
- To put a circuit element into action by supplying a suitable input pulse.
Noun
enabling (plural enablings)
- An act or an instance of something being enabled.
- Despite the epidemic of homosexual abuse of the young by the American clergy, the history of cover-ups and enablings of these abominations by the bishop […]2010, Andrew J. McCauley, Crossing the Threshold of Confusion
Forms of enabling
| plural | enablings |
|---|
Words formed from enabling
Phrases with enabling
Questions about enabling
- What does enabling mean?
- Enabling means an act or an instance of something being enabled.
- What is enabling the present participle and gerund of?
- Enabling is the present participle and gerund of enable.
- What part of speech is enabling?
- Enabling is a noun.
- What is the plural of enabling?
- The plural of enabling is enablings.
Words near enabling in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: enabling (page history and authors); enable (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: “enabling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/enabling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
