Word.ws English Dictionary

lessing

lessing is the present participle and gerund of less.

Meaning of less

Verb

less (third-person singular simple present lesses, present participle lessing, simple past and past participle lessed)

  1. (archaic) To make less; to lessen.
    • What he will make lesse, he lesseth.1386-90, Gower, Confessio Amantis

See all 9 meanings of less

Proper noun capitalized: Lessing

Lessing (plural Lessings)

  1. A surname from German.
    • The 800-word work (on a paper slightly bigger than a postcard) is one of 13 works submitted by a group of authors that includes Doris Lessing, Tom Stoppard, Margaret Atwood and Nick Hornby, The Associated Press reported. Ms. Rowling used both sides of her card to handwrite the prequel to her...2008 May 30, Felicia R. Lee, “Harry Potter Prequel for Charity”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 19 Aug 2023

Forms of lessing

pluralLessings

Origin of lessing

* As a German surname, borrowed from German Lessing, a variant of Lessig. * As a Lower Sorbian surname, from lesník (“forester”). Compare Lesnik.

Words formed from lessing

Questions about lessing

What does lessing mean?
Lessing means a surname from German.
What is lessing the present participle and gerund of?
Lessing is the present participle and gerund of less.
What part of speech is lessing?
Lessing is a proper noun.

Words near lessing in the dictionary

  1. lessgo
  2. lessie
  3. lessies
  4. Lessig
  5. Lessigs
  6. lessing
  7. Lessingham
  8. Lessingian
  9. Lessings
  10. Lessley
  11. Lessleys

Source and license

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