Word.ws English Dictionary

frowning upon

frowning upon is the present participle and gerund of frown upon.

Meaning of frown upon

Verb

frown upon (third-person singular simple present frowns upon, present participle frowning upon, simple past and past participle frowned upon)

  1. (transitive) To disapprove of.
    • Regular passengers become familiar with their train and attempts to change its make-up or any other aspect of its working are more often than not frowned upon, even though the change is probably for the better.1962 September, Warren Smith, “The problems of coaching stock rostering and operation”, in Modern Railways, page 193
    Synonyms:
    frown at, frown on

Questions about frowning upon

What is frowning upon the present participle and gerund of?
Frowning upon is the present participle and gerund of frown upon.

Words near frowning upon in the dictionary

  1. frowniest
  2. frownin'
  3. frowning
  4. frowning at
  5. frowning on
  6. frowning upon
  7. frowningly
  8. frownings
  9. frownless
  10. frownlessly
  11. frowns

Source and license

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