abandoning

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of abandon.

   The captain was abandoning the ship just as the storm hit.

   Abandoning the plan now would waste years of work.

   Note

   The -ing form does three jobs, each with its own grammar. After a form of be it builds the progressive (were abandoning their homes). Heading a clause, it works as a noun yet still takes an object, and its subject can be a possessive (their abandoning their homes). Before a noun it describes (an abandoning husband). In the verbal uses an object follows, since every sense of abandon is transitive.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   An act of deserting or giving up someone or something; abandonment or neglect.

   The court treated the abandoning of the infant as a serious crime.

   Critics condemned the company's abandoning of its loyal workers.

   Similardesertion, neglect

   Note

   Here the word has become a true noun, so it can be counted. Annette Baier writes of "the gentlest of abandonings," and Richard Oastler in 1842 of "disgraceful abandonings of their unhappy victims." Unlike the verbal gerund, it takes adjectives and an of-phrase rather than a direct object: the abandoning of the infant, not abandoning the infant. Beside abandonment, it keeps attention on the act rather than the resulting state.

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