Word.ws English Dictionary

perishing

perishing adjective: extremely cold. Also the present participle and gerund of perish.

Adjective

perishing (comparative more perishing, superlative most perishing)

  1. Extremely cold.
  2. Extreme; used of environmental or bodily conditions.
    • If many more white men knew of this method of obtaining and extracting water, there would be, perhaps, many saved from the horrors of perishing thirst.1946, Frank W. C. Rieck, Life as I See It, page 308
    • A boulder ground into Joe's thigh and he yelled for what seemed an eternity in the perishing heat but, apart from a few bird calls, the horse's laboured breath was the only sound he heard.2011, Mary Groves, An Outback Life, page 102

Noun

perishing (plural perishings)

  1. The act of something that perishes; decay or destruction.
    • Since the world of becoming, of origins and perishings, is deficient in true Being, it cannot be known in the best sense.1971, William Barrett, Henry David Aiken, Pragmatism and America's philosophical coming of age, page 323

Also used as

perishing is also the present participle and gerund of perish.

Forms of perishing

Adjective
comparativemore perishing
superlativemost perishing
Noun
pluralperishings

Questions about perishing

What does perishing mean?
Perishing means extremely cold.
What part of speech is perishing?
Perishing can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near perishing in the dictionary

  1. Perisher Valley
  2. perishers
  3. perishes
  4. perishest
  5. perisheth
  6. perishing
  7. perishingly
  8. perishings
  9. perishless
  10. perishment
  11. perishments

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: perishing (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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