Word.ws English Dictionary

signifying

signifying is the present participle and gerund of signify.

Meaning of signify

Verb

signify (third-person singular simple present signifies, present participle signifying, simple past and past participle signified)

  1. To create a sign out of something.
  2. To give (something) a meaning or an importance.
  3. To show one’s intentions with a sign etc.; to indicate, announce, or portend.
    • I’ll to the king; and signify to him / That thus I have resign’d my charge to you.c. 1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third: […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
  4. To mean; to betoken.
    • Life’s […] a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
  5. To make a difference; to matter (in negative or interrogative expressions).
    • To be but in the company of those we love, satisfies us: it does not signify whether we speak to ’em or not, whether we think on them or on indifferent things. To be near ’em is all.1699, uncredited translator, “Of the Heart”, in The Characters, or, The Manners of the Age, London: John Bullord, translation of original by Jean de La Bruyère, page 84

Noun

signifying (plural signifyings)

  1. signification
    • For the sake of convenience, we may call these pointings or signifyings the secondary phase of meaning.1939, Coleman Roberts Griffith, Psychology Applied to Teaching and Learning

Forms of signifying

pluralsignifyings

Phrases with signifying

Questions about signifying

What does signifying mean?
Signifying means signification.
What is signifying the present participle and gerund of?
Signifying is the present participle and gerund of signify.
What part of speech is signifying?
Signifying is a noun.
What is the plural of signifying?
The plural of signifying is signifyings.

Words near signifying in the dictionary

  1. signifieth
  2. signifigance
  3. signify
  4. signifyin'
  5. signifyin(g)
  6. signifying
  7. signifying chain
  8. signifying chains
  9. signifying monkey
  10. signifying monkeys
  11. signifyingly

Source and license

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