Word.ws English Dictionary

nudging

nudging is the present participle and gerund of nudge.

Noun

nudging (plural nudgings)

  1. The act of giving a nudge; pushing, touching.
  2. Hinting or influencing people's choices (according to nudge theory); softly controlling.
    • It has been remarked that nudging is also a euphemism for psychological manipulation as practiced in social engineering.

Meaning of nudge

Verb

nudge (third-person singular simple present nudges, present participle nudging, simple past and past participle nudged)

  1. (transitive) To push against gently, especially in order to gain attention or give a signal.
    • Libertarian paternalism is the view that, because the way options are presented to citizens affects what they choose, society should present options in a way that “nudges” our intuitive selves to make choices that are more consistent with what our more deliberative selves would have chosen if they...2012 January, Steven Sloman, “The Battle Between Intuition and Deliberation”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 1, archived from the original on 08 Jan 2012, page 74
    Synonyms:
    jog
  2. (transitive) To near or come close to something.
    • This year's profits are nudging the 10 million mark.
  3. (transitive) To move slightly.
    • But a serious public health and economic crisis, and the responses to it from commonwealth and state governments, seems to have nudged some “protest” voters back into the major party fold.2021 February 2, Katharine Murphy, The Guardian

See all 7 meanings of nudge

Forms of nudging

pluralnudgings

Phrases with nudging

Questions about nudging

What does nudging mean?
Nudging means the act of giving a nudge; pushing, touching.
What is nudging the present participle and gerund of?
Nudging is the present participle and gerund of nudge.
What part of speech is nudging?
Nudging is a noun.
What is the plural of nudging?
The plural of nudging is nudgings.

Words near nudging in the dictionary

  1. nudger
  2. nudgers
  3. nudges
  4. nudges ahead
  5. nudges out
  6. nudging
  7. nudging ahead
  8. nudging out
  9. nudgingly
  10. nudgings
  11. nudgy

Source and license

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