Word.ws English Dictionary

enterprising

enterprising adjective: displaying bravery and daring in attempting some task. Also the present participle and gerund of enterprise.

Adjective

enterprising (comparative more enterprising, superlative most enterprising)

  1. Displaying bravery and daring in attempting some task.
  2. Very able and ingenious in business dealings or social advancement.
    • It was now settled that every body was to be amused by her coarse jest and her odd expressions, and therefore everybody was amused. Moreover, there was another great secret of her popularity; all in her company luxuriated in a little complacent sense of their own superiority,—one of the most...1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter II, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 22

Noun

enterprising (plural enterprisings)

  1. The undertaking of an enterprise; purposeful activity; doings.
    • What gives these enterprisings their political character are the contentions, claims and experiences of the other.2010, Melvin Pollner, Mundane Reason: Reality in Everyday and Sociological Discourse

Also used as

enterprising is also the present participle and gerund of enterprise.

Examples of enterprising in a sentence

  • Taking a page from Court TV, some enterprising soul will start Death TV.
  • There we were met by enterprising citizens and coffeed and sandwiched by pretty girls.
  • What’s fun for the energetic is money for the enterprising.

All 17 example sentences with enterprising

Synonyms of enterprising

Forms of enterprising

Adjective
comparativemore enterprising
superlativemost enterprising
Noun
pluralenterprisings

Words formed from enterprising

Questions about enterprising

What does enterprising mean?
Enterprising means displaying bravery and daring in attempting some task.
What part of speech is enterprising?
Enterprising can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near enterprising in the dictionary

  1. enterpriser
  2. enterprisers
  3. enterprises
  4. enterprisewide
  5. enterprisey
  6. enterprising
  7. enterprisingly
  8. enterprisingness
  9. enterprisings
  10. enterprize
  11. enterprizes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: enterprising (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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