agreeing

Pluralagreeings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of agree.

   Agreeing to every request left her with no free time at all.

   After agreeing on a fair price, the two traders shook hands.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. In "she is agreeing" it is a participle building the progressive, and after a preposition, as in "after agreeing on a price," it acts as a gerund. Most uses need a preposition: agreeing to, on, with. In UK and Irish usage it can also take a direct object, as in agreeing the budget, meaning approving it. Unlike the countable noun, the gerund never takes a plural.

2. 2
   noun

   An agreement, whether a shared opinion or a settlement that people come to between themselves.

   Note

   A noun that can be counted, with the plural agreeings, and the plural is where it shines. Thomas Carlyle's History of Friedrich II. of Prussia (1858) piles up an "inextricable coil of claimings, quarrellings and agreeings," turning a reign into a tangle of repeated acts. That rhythmic run of -ing nouns is its natural home. For a single settlement, agreement is the everyday word.

Showing meanings only. Show all 2