Word.ws English Dictionary

ministering

ministering is the present participle and gerund of minister.

Meaning of minister

Verb

minister (third-person singular simple present ministers, present participle ministering, simple past and past participle ministered)

  1. (intransitive) To attend to (the needs of); to tend; to take care (of); to give aid; to give service.
  2. (intransitive) To function as a clergyman or as the officiant in church worship.
  3. (archaic, transitive) To afford, to give, to supply.
    • I do vvell beleeue your Highneſſe, and did it to miniſter occaſion to theſe Gentlemen, […]1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published...

See all 8 meanings of minister

Adjective

ministering (not comparable)

  1. Of one who, or something that, administers.
    • Hitherto all that I had acquired had been unsatisfactory—the reward was too distant; but Carrara's mystic eloquence brought the result of our midnight vigils visibly before me; and when I left him, it was to dream of the glorious secrets which, once penetrated, would lay all nature open to our...1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 126

Noun

ministering (plural ministerings)

  1. The act of one who ministers; ministration.
    • I could not be in your daughter's company, and have the grace of her gentle ministerings.1896, Andrew Lang, A Monk of Fife

Forms of ministering

pluralministerings

Words formed from ministering

Questions about ministering

What does ministering mean?
Ministering means of one who, or something that, administers.
What is ministering the present participle and gerund of?
Ministering is the present participle and gerund of minister.
What part of speech is ministering?
Ministering can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near ministering in the dictionary

  1. ministeriality
  2. ministerially
  3. ministerialness
  4. ministerials
  5. ministeries
  6. ministering
  7. ministering angel
  8. ministerings
  9. ministerium
  10. ministeriums
  11. ministerless

Source and license

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