Word.ws English Dictionary

following

Syllables: fol·low·ingUK/ˈfɒləʊɪŋ/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Northumbria/ˈfɒləɪn/

following adjective: coming next, either in sequence or in time. Also the present participle and gerund of follow.

Adjective

following (not comparable)

  1. Coming next, either in sequence or in time.
    • See the following section.
    • Towards the following morning, the thermometer fell to 5°; and at daylight, there was not an atom of water to be seen in any direction.1835, Sir John Ross, Sir James Clark Ross, Narrative of a Second Voyage in Search of a North-west Passage …, Volume 1, pages 284–5
  2. About to be specified.
    • The following words have no definition[…]
    Synonyms:
    undermentioned
  3. Blowing in the direction of travel, as opposed to headwind; downwind.
    • The following wind sped us on our way.

Preposition

following

  1. (proscribed, sometimes) After, subsequent to.
    • Following the meeting, we all had a chat.
    • We published our findings following a thorough review of others' earlier reports.
    Antonyms:
    before, prior to
  2. In accordance with; as per.
    • Following all relevant safety instructions, administer a dose of the corticosteroid.
    • Administer a dose of the corticosteroid, following all relevant safety instructions.
    Synonyms:
    per

Noun

following (plural followings)

  1. A group of followers, attendants or admirers; an entourage.
    • He had a loyal following.
    • And White Hart Lane was stunned when Rovers scored just five minutes after the restart in front of their away following.2011 September 29, Jon Smith, “Tottenham 3 - 1 Shamrock Rovers”, in BBC Sport
  2. Vocation; business; profession.
  3. (with-definite-article, treated as singular or plural) A thing or things to be mentioned immediately after.
    • The following is a recommendation letter from the president.
    • The following are the three most important questions.
  4. (social media) An account which is followed.
    • When a new user joins Weibo, he should register Weibo and get a unique ID, and then he takes some existing users as his followings and waits for others to follow him.2014, Zhengbiao Guo, Zhitang Li, Hao Tu, Da Xie, “Weibo: An Information-Driven Online Social Network”, in Marina L.Gavrilova, C.J. Kenneth Tan, editors, Transactions on Computational Science XXII...
    • A follower can follow any other users and receive any kind of tweets from his or her followings.2017, Konglin Zhu, Xiaoming Fu, Wenzhong Li, Sanglu Lu, Jan Nagler, “Population Growth in Online Social Networks”, in Xiaoming Fu, Jar-Der Luo, Margarete Boos, editors, Social Network Analysis...

Also used as

following is also the present participle and gerund of follow.

following meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

following in Hindi

निम्नलिखित

following in Tamil

பின்வரும், பின்வருவன

following in Urdu

مندرجہ ذیل

following in Bengali

অনুসরণ করা হচ্ছে
More languagesFewer languages
following in Malayalam
താഴെപ്പറയുന്ന
following in Punjabi
ਹੇਠ ਲਿਖੇ
following in Odia
ନିମ୍ନଲିଖିତ
following in Nepali
पछ्याउँदै
following in Arabic
تَالٍ tālin, التَّالِي at-tālī, بَعْد baʕd

Examples of following in a sentence

  • Both her followings accumulate to an impressive 16.9, almost 17 million followers.2023 January 31, Katelyn Mensah, “Who is Mikayla Nogueira? The beauty TikToker whose face and eyelashes are all over your FYP”, in The Tab...
  • Move Forward, which has built a strong following among young people, appeared to have outperformed expectations.2023 May 14, Rebecca Ratcliffe, Thitipol Panyalimpanun, “Opposition parties take lead in Thai election”, in The Guardian:
  • She scrolled through her [Chloe’s] page and liked a few of her pictures that were like candy to her eyes before thoroughly checking her followings.2020, Jay Janzee, Don’t Get Too Close, Pittsburgh, Pa.: RoseDog Books, →ISBN, page 79:

All 40 example sentences with following

Synonyms of following

Antonyms

10 more antonymsFewer antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of following

Forms of following

pluralfollowings

Origin of following

By surface analysis, follow + -ing.

Words formed from following

Phrases with following

5 more phrasesFewer phrases

Questions about following

What does following mean?
Following means coming next, either in sequence or in time.
What is following in Hindi?
Following in Hindi is निम्नलिखित. See Following meaning in Hindi.
How do you use following in a sentence?
Both her followings accumulate to an impressive 16.9, almost 17 million followers.
What part of speech is following?
Following can be an adjective, a preposition or a noun.
How do you pronounce following?
Following is pronounced /ˈfɒləʊɪŋ/ (UK).

Words near following in the dictionary

  1. followership
  2. followerships
  3. followest
  4. followeth
  5. followin'
  6. following
  7. following along
  8. following in someone's footsteps
  9. following on
  10. following one's heart
  11. following one's nose

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: following (page history and authors); following (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); following (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); following (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); following (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); following (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); following (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); following (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); following (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-following.ogg.

Cite this entry: “following.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/following. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.