Word.ws English Dictionary

impairing

impairing is the present participle and gerund of impair.

Meaning of impair

Verb

impair (third-person singular simple present impairs, present participle impairing, simple past and past participle impaired)

  1. (transitive) To weaken; to affect negatively; to have a diminishing effect on.
    • In 2016, it was announced that Jones had been diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia, a form of dementia that impairs the ability to communicate.2020 January 22, Stuart Jeffries, “Terry Jones obituary”, in The Guardian
  2. (archaic, intransitive) To grow worse; to deteriorate.
    • Flesh may empaire,[…]but reason can repaire.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

See all 6 meanings of impair

Noun

impairing (plural impairings)

  1. impairment
    • […] those invasions and impairings to which the smaller revenues of the English clergy are daily subject […]1851, Thomas Carte, The life of James duke of Ormond, page 25

Forms of impairing

pluralimpairings

Questions about impairing

What does impairing mean?
Impairing means impairment.
What is impairing the present participle and gerund of?
Impairing is the present participle and gerund of impair.
What part of speech is impairing?
Impairing is a noun.
What is the plural of impairing?
The plural of impairing is impairings.

Words near impairing in the dictionary

  1. impaireds
  2. impairer
  3. impairers
  4. impairest
  5. impaireth
  6. impairing
  7. impairings
  8. impairment
  9. impairments
  10. impairs
  11. impala

Source and license

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