Word.ws English Dictionary

getting better

getting better is the present participle and gerund of get better.

Meaning of get better

Verb

get better (third-person singular simple present gets better, present participle getting better, simple past got better, past participle (UK) got better or (US) gotten better)

  1. (intransitive, literally) To improve.
  2. (idiomatic, intransitive) To recover from illness or other incapacitation.
    • [Sir Bedevere]: What makes you think she's a witch?
      [Peasant]: Well, she turned me into a newt!
      [Sir Bedevere]: A newt?
      [Peasant]: ... I got better.1975 from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail (quotes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail on Wikiquote)

Questions about getting better

What is getting better the present participle and gerund of?
Getting better is the present participle and gerund of get better.

Words near getting better in the dictionary

  1. getting back at
  2. getting back on the horse that bucked one
  3. getting back to
  4. getting behind
  5. getting bent out of shape
  6. getting better
  7. getting between
  8. getting blood from a stone
  9. getting blood from a turnip
  10. getting blood out of a stone
  11. getting busy

Source and license

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