Word.ws English Dictionary

unsmothering

unsmothering is the present participle and gerund of unsmother.

Meaning of unsmother

Verb

unsmother (third-person singular simple present unsmothers, present participle unsmothering, simple past and past participle unsmothered)

  1. (transitive) To release (someone) from smothering.
    • A tale, a very tale, Angelo, enter for the loue of heauen, enter and vnſmother me.1611, George Chapman, May-Day. A Witty Comedie, […], London: […] [William Stansby] for Iohn Brown, […], →OCLC, Act IV, page 59

Adjective

unsmothering (comparative more unsmothering, superlative most unsmothering)

  1. Not smothering.
    • He wanted Carol as a friend with her practicality, serenity and unsmothering sympathy.2011, Ann Widdecombe, Father Figure
    • Ferguson could never let go of his mother, his unsmothering mother whose love was the source of all life for him, and merely to see her frown at him with that sad look in her eyes was a devastation, a bullet in the heart.2017, Paul Auster, 4 3 2 1: A Novel, page 445

Forms of unsmothering

comparativemore unsmothering
superlativemost unsmothering

Questions about unsmothering

What does unsmothering mean?
Unsmothering means not smothering.
What is unsmothering the present participle and gerund of?
Unsmothering is the present participle and gerund of unsmother.
What part of speech is unsmothering?
Unsmothering is an adjective.

Words near unsmothering in the dictionary

  1. unsmooths
  2. unsmote
  3. unsmother
  4. unsmotherable
  5. unsmothered
  6. unsmothering
  7. unsmothers
  8. unsmudged
  9. unsmug
  10. unsmuggled
  11. unsmutched

Source and license

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