Word.ws English Dictionary

practicing

practicing is the present participle and gerund of practice.

Adjective

practicing (not comparable)

  1. Actively engaged in a profession.
    • My uncle is a practicing dentist.
    Antonyms:
    nonpracticing
  2. Participating in the rituals and mores of a religion.

Meaning of practice

Noun

practice (usually uncountable, plural practices)

  1. (usually) Repetition of an activity to improve a skill.
    • Near-synonyms: (sometimes synonymous) training, rehearsing, rehearsal, dry run, trial, workout
    1. (usually) An organized event for the purpose of performing such repetition.
      • Being on a team is hard: you're always having to go to practice while everyone else is taking it easy.
    2. (usually) The state of being proficient due to repetition of a skill.
      • I was rusty, but after a few months, I got back into practice.
  2. (especially, usually) The ongoing pursuit of a craft or profession, particularly in medicine or the fine arts.
    • Which is the most demanding? I think that my practice as an artist is 'stronger' because it is the practice that best fuels and balances myself and that generates new knowledge for my other work as both arts educator and creative arts therapist.2016, Raphael Vella, Artist-Teachers in Context: International Dialogues, Springer, →ISBN, page 53
    1. (especially, usually) Skilful or artful management; dexterity in contrivance or the use of means; stratagem; artifice.
      • He sought to have that by practice which he could not by prayer.a. 1587, Philippe Sidnei [i.e., Philip Sidney], “(please specify the folio)”, in [Fulke Greville; Matthew Gwinne; John Florio], editors, The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia [The New Arcadia], London...
    2. (especially, usually) An easy and concise method of applying the rules of arithmetic to questions which occur in trade and business.

See all 11 meanings of practice

Noun

practicing (plural practicings)

  1. The act or process of one who practices.
    1. Drilling, exercise.
      • Near-synonyms: rehearsing, rehearsal

Synonyms of practicing

6 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

Forms of practicing

pluralpracticings

Words formed from practicing

Phrases with practicing

Questions about practicing

What does practicing mean?
Practicing means actively engaged in a profession.
What is practicing the present participle and gerund of?
Practicing is the present participle and gerund of practice.
What part of speech is practicing?
Practicing can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near practicing in the dictionary

  1. practices what one preaches
  2. practicewear
  3. practician
  4. practicians
  5. practicin'
  6. practicing
  7. practicing what one preaches
  8. practicings
  9. practicioner
  10. practick
  11. practicks

Source and license

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