Word.ws English Dictionary

ensnaring

ensnaring is the present participle and gerund of ensnare.

Meaning of ensnare

Verb

ensnare (third-person singular simple present ensnares, present participle ensnaring, simple past and past participle ensnared)

  1. To entrap; to catch in a snare or trap.
    • Let theſe / Inſnare the vvretched in the toils of lavv, / Fomenting diſcord, and perplexing right, / An iron race!a. 1749 (date written), James Thomson, “Autumn”, in The Seasons, London: […] A[ndrew] Millar, and sold by Thomas Cadell, […], published 1768, →OCLC, page 160, lines 1289–1292
  2. (figuratively) To entangle; to enmesh.
    • But electric vehicles and the batteries that made them run became ensnared in corporate scandals, fraud, and monopolistic corruption that shook the confidence of the nation and inspired automotive upstarts.2006, Edwin Black, chapter 1, in Internal Combustion

Adjective

ensnaring (comparative more ensnaring, superlative most ensnaring)

  1. That ensnares or traps.
    • Abraham, like his parents, seemed to have been limed and caught by the ensnaring inn.1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, volume 1, London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., page 39

Forms of ensnaring

comparativemore ensnaring
superlativemost ensnaring

Words formed from ensnaring

Questions about ensnaring

What does ensnaring mean?
Ensnaring means that ensnares or traps.
What is ensnaring the present participle and gerund of?
Ensnaring is the present participle and gerund of ensnare.
What part of speech is ensnaring?
Ensnaring is an adjective.

Words near ensnaring in the dictionary

  1. ensnarer
  2. ensnarers
  3. ensnares
  4. ensnarest
  5. ensnareth
  6. ensnaring
  7. ensnaringly
  8. ensnarl
  9. ensnarled
  10. ensnarling
  11. ensnarls

Source and license

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