absorbing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of absorb.

   The thick soil is absorbing the rainfall faster than it can pool.

   Absorbing the costs of the recall hurt the company's quarterly profits.

   Note

   The verb form keeps the verb's habit of taking an object: absorbing heat, absorbing a blow without recoil, absorbing a smaller body into a larger whole. It can also stand alone and mean sinking in, as water does into soil. That object is the quickest way to tell it from the adjective of interest. An absorbing book needs no object, while a sponge is always absorbing something.

2. 2
   adjective

   So engrossing that it holds someone's attention completely and sustains their interest.

   The novel proved absorbing enough to keep her reading past midnight.

   He gave an absorbing lecture that held the whole room's attention.

   Similarengrossing, gripping, riveting, fascinating, compelling

   Oppositeboring, dull, tedious, uninteresting

   Note

   A participle that has settled into being an adjective. It was built from absorb plus -ing, but it now grades like any adjective: more absorbing, most absorbing. It sits comfortably before a noun, as in an absorbing pursuit, and it pairs naturally with other words of pace and drama, as in an absorbing, fast-paced game. Grading is the clearest sign that the word is working as an adjective rather than as a verb.

3. 3
   adjective

   Letting a process enter but never leave, so once it is reached the process cannot be exited.

   Like a one-way door: you can go through it, but it won't let you come back.

   An absorbing state in the model retains every process that reaches it.

   Once the chain enters an absorbing condition, it remains there permanently.

   Note

   A statistician's term, used of a state in a process: an absorbing state is one the process can reach but never leave. In a Markov chain, such a state is kept with probability one at every later step. The image is the old one of swallowing up, where what goes in stays in. It has nothing to do with the "engrossing" meaning.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3