Word.ws English Dictionary

ruining

ruining is the present participle and gerund of ruin.

Meaning of ruin

Verb

ruin (third-person singular simple present ruins, present participle ruining, simple past and past participle ruined or (dialectal, nonstandard) ruint)

  1. (transitive) To cause the fiscal ruin of; to bankrupt or drive out of business.
    • With all these purchases, you surely mean to ruin us!
  2. To destroy or render something no longer usable or operable.
    • He ruined his new white slacks by accidentally spilling oil on them.
  3. To destroy (e.g. a city) so as to leave ruins.
    • By the fireside there are old men seated, / Seeing ruined cities in the ashes.1857, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Golden Mile-Stone
  4. To upset or overturn the plans or progress of, or to have a disastrous effect on something.
    • My car breaking down just as I was on the road ruined my vacation.
  5. To make something less enjoyable or likeable.
    • I used to love that song, but being assaulted when that song was playing ruined the song for me.
  6. To make (someone) have a ruined orgasm.

See all 16 meanings of ruin

Noun

ruining (plural ruinings)

  1. The act or process by which something is ruined.

Forms of ruining

pluralruinings

Questions about ruining

What does ruining mean?
Ruining means the act or process by which something is ruined.
What is ruining the present participle and gerund of?
Ruining is the present participle and gerund of ruin.
What part of speech is ruining?
Ruining is a noun.
What is the plural of ruining?
The plural of ruining is ruinings.

Words near ruining in the dictionary

  1. ruineth
  2. ruing
  3. ruing the day
  4. ruiniform
  5. ruinin'
  6. ruining
  7. ruinings
  8. ruinism
  9. ruinless
  10. ruinlike
  11. ruinous

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ruining (page history and authors); ruin (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “ruining.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ruining. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.