Word.ws English Dictionary

espousing

espousing is the present participle and gerund of espouse.

Meaning of espouse

Verb

espouse (third-person singular simple present espouses, present participle espousing, simple past and past participle espoused)

  1. (transitive) To marry.
    • For I am iealous ouer you with godly iealousie, for I haue espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 2 Corinthians 11:2
  2. (figuratively, transitive, modern usage) To accept, support, or take on as one’s own (an idea or a cause).
    • Although Dowty’s proposal is attractive from the point of view of the alternative argument linking theory that I am espousing, since it eschews the use of thematic roles and thematic role hierarchies, […], but it still has some drawbacks.1998, William Croft, “The Projection of Arguments”, in Miriam Butt, Wilhelm Geuder, editors, Event Structure in Argument Linking, page 37

Questions about espousing

What is espousing the present participle and gerund of?
Espousing is the present participle and gerund of espouse.

Words near espousing in the dictionary

  1. espouser
  2. espousers
  3. espouses
  4. espousest
  5. espouseth
  6. espousing
  7. ESPP
  8. ESPPs
  9. espressi
  10. espressivo
  11. espresso

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: espousing (page history and authors); espouse (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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