Word.ws English Dictionary

sulking

sulking is the present participle and gerund of sulk.

Meaning of sulk

Verb

sulk (third-person singular simple present sulks, present participle sulking, simple past and past participle sulked)

  1. (intransitive) To express ill humor or offence by remaining sullenly silent or withdrawn.
    • Mr. Riach, who had been to the college, spoke to me like a friend when he was not sulking, and told me many curious things, […]1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 1886, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    mope

See all 5 meanings of sulk

Noun

sulking (plural sulkings)

  1. The act of one who sulks.
    • "He has seen you, too, he says; and thinks you have seen him, hey?" and Dangerfield chuckled more and more knowingly, and watched his shiftings and sulkings with a pleasant grin, as he teased and quizzed him in his own enigmatical way.1863, J[oseph] Sheridan Le Fanu, “Concerning a Rouleau of Guineas and the Crack of a Pistol”, in The House by the Church-yard. […], volume II, London: Tinsley, Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 146

Forms of sulking

pluralsulkings

Questions about sulking

What does sulking mean?
Sulking means the act of one who sulks.
What is sulking the present participle and gerund of?
Sulking is the present participle and gerund of sulk.
What part of speech is sulking?
Sulking is a noun.
What is the plural of sulking?
The plural of sulking is sulkings.

Words near sulking in the dictionary

  1. sulkies
  2. sulkiest
  3. sulkily
  4. sulkiness
  5. sulkinesses
  6. sulking
  7. sulkingly
  8. sulkings
  9. Sulkis
  10. Sulkowski
  11. Sulkowskis

Source and license

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