aiding

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of aid.

   The charity is aiding thousands of displaced families this winter.

   By aiding the investigation, she earned a reduced sentence.

   Note

   The -ing form does two jobs. After a form of be it builds the progressive (the charity is aiding thousands). As a gerund it can follow a preposition or stand as a subject (by aiding the investigation). In both uses it stays a transitive verb and takes a direct object. Climbers use it too, for ascending with pitons and similar aids. Once it takes a plural, it has become the noun for the act itself.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of one who gives help or assistance to another.

   The aiding of refugees became the center of her humanitarian work.

   His tireless aiding of the wounded earned the gratitude of the whole regiment.

   Similarhelping, support

   Note

   As a true noun, it can be counted and made plural, and it takes its object through of: the aiding of refugees, where the participle would say aiding refugees. Charles Dickens's American Notes for General Circulation (1842) uses the plural in a pointed doublet, "aidings and abettings of every bad inclination in the popular mind." In that phrase, help shades into complicity.

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