Word.ws English Dictionary

reacting

reacting is the present participle and gerund of react.

Meaning of react

Verb

react (third-person singular simple present reacts, present participle reacting, simple past and past participle reacted)

  1. (intransitive) To act in response.
    • How did she react to the news?
    Synonyms:
    take
  2. (archaic, transitive) To act or perform a second time; to do over again; to reenact.
    • It is somewhat extraordinary, that the offence for which James II, was expelled, that of setting up power by assumption, should be re-acted, under another shape and form, by the parliament that expelled him.1791, Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
  3. (intransitive) To return an impulse or impression; to resist the action of another body by an opposite force
    • Every body reacts on the body that impels it from its natural state.
  4. (intransitive) To act upon each other; to exercise a reciprocal or a reverse effect, as two or more chemical agents; to act in opposition.
  5. (transitive) To cause chemical agents to react; to cause one chemical agent to react with another.
  6. (Internet, intransitive) To post a reaction (icon or emoji indicating how one feels about a posted message).

See all 7 meanings of react

Questions about reacting

What is reacting the present participle and gerund of?
Reacting is the present participle and gerund of react.

Words near reacting in the dictionary

  1. reactantlike
  2. reactants
  3. reacted
  4. reacter
  5. reacters
  6. reacting
  7. reaction
  8. reaction control system
  9. reaction control systems
  10. reaction drive
  11. reaction drives

Source and license

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