Word.ws English Dictionary

hanging upon

hanging upon is the present participle and gerund of hang upon.

Meaning of hang upon

Verb

hang upon (third-person singular simple present hangs upon, present participle hanging upon, simple past and past participle hung upon)

  1. To regard with passionate affection.
    • Beshrew the eyes that hung upon his form on that day with a passionate, greedy, all-absorbing love!1916, Varahaneri Venkatesa Subramaniam Aiyar, The Kural or the Maxims of Tiruvalluvar
  2. To pay overt attention to, as from sycophancy or intense interest.
    • They hung upon his every word.
  3. To hover around.
    • and it was therefore decided merely to take precautions against a raid, fortify certain points on the roads, and bring out a host of irregulars to hang upon the rear and flanks of the enemy1919, Justin Harvey Smith, The War with Mexico
  4. (idiomatic) To depend upon.
    • Everything hangs upon whether the boss agrees.
    Synonyms:
    hang on

Questions about hanging upon

What is hanging upon the present participle and gerund of?
Hanging upon is the present participle and gerund of hang upon.

Words near hanging upon in the dictionary

  1. hanging up one's boots
  2. hanging up one's fiddle
  3. hanging up one's hat
  4. hanging up one's spurs
  5. hanging up the boots
  6. hanging upon
  7. hanging valley
  8. hanging valleys
  9. hanging wall
  10. hanging walls
  11. hanging wet bag

Source and license

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