Word.ws English Dictionary

extemporizing

extemporizing is the present participle and gerund of extemporize.

Meaning of extemporize

Verb

extemporize (third-person singular simple present extemporizes, present participle extemporizing, simple past and past participle extemporized)

  1. (intransitive) To perform or speak without prior planning or thought; to act in an impromptu manner; to improvise.
    • "Will you please tell me whose music you have been playing?" . . .
      "It's nobody's, miss."
      "Do you mean you have been extemporizing all this time?"1881, George MacDonald, chapter 35, in Mary Marston
  2. (transitive) To adapt, improvise, or devise action or speech in an impromptu or spontaneous manner.
    • As the music came fresher on their ears, they danced to its cadence, extemporizing new steps and attitudes.1860, Nathaniel Hawthorne, chapter 10, in The Marble Faun

Questions about extemporizing

What is extemporizing the present participle and gerund of?
Extemporizing is the present participle and gerund of extemporize.

Words near extemporizing in the dictionary

  1. extemporize
  2. extemporized
  3. extemporizer
  4. extemporizers
  5. extemporizes
  6. extemporizing
  7. extend
  8. extend a hand
  9. extend one's hand
  10. extendabilities
  11. extendability

Source and license

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