Word.ws English Dictionary

prosecuting

prosecuting is the present participle and gerund of prosecute.

Meaning of prosecute

Verb

prosecute (third-person singular simple present prosecutes, present participle prosecuting, simple past and past participle prosecuted)

  1. (transitive) To start criminal proceedings against.
    • to prosecute a man for trespass, or for a riot
  2. (transitive) To charge, try.
    • The Vigilante is prosecuted in Federal Court under a lynch bill and winds up in a Federal Nut House specially designed for the containment of ghosts […]1962 [1959], William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch, New York: Grove Press, page 8
  3. To seek to obtain by legal process.
    • to prosecute a right or a claim in a court of law
  4. (transitive) To pursue something to the end.
    • to prosecute a scheme, hope, or an investigation

Phrases with prosecuting

Questions about prosecuting

What is prosecuting the present participle and gerund of?
Prosecuting is the present participle and gerund of prosecute.

Words near prosecuting in the dictionary

  1. prosecutee
  2. prosecutees
  3. prosecutes
  4. prosecutest
  5. prosecuteth
  6. prosecuting
  7. prosecuting attorney
  8. prosecuting attorneys
  9. prosecution
  10. prosecution association
  11. prosecution associations

Source and license

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