assisting

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of assist.

   The paramedic is assisting an injured cyclist at the roadside.

   Assisting with the office move took the whole afternoon.

   Note

   The -ing form does two jobs. After be it builds the progressive (she is assisting the surgeon), and on its own it names the activity (assisting at a birth). It carries every use of assist, so a player can be assisting on a goal and a therapy can be assisting someone's breathing. In older prose, assisting at a ceremony means attending it, not helping with it.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   Assistance or help given to a person or effort.

   His steady assisting in the kitchen freed the head chef for other tasks.

   The team relied on her assisting throughout the busy holiday season.

   Similarhelp, assistance, support, aid

   Oppositehindrance

   Note

   Unlike assistance, this noun can be counted and made plural, so it can name separate acts of help rather than help in general. The Bible Christian magazine of 1871 speaks of "the gracious and altogether sufficient assistings of the Holy Ghost". That plural is the clearest sign of the difference: you cannot say assistances in quite the same way.

3. 3
   adjectivearchaic

   Helpful; serving in a supporting or auxiliary role to something else.

   The assisting forces arrived in time to turn the course of the battle.

   In the meantime, he plainly perceived that she would not stoop to be directly assisting to his views on Laura.

   1789, John Moore, Zeluco

   Note

   An older adjective that took to, the way helpful to or conducive to does. John Moore's Zeluco (1789) has a woman who "would not stoop to be directly assisting to his views on Laura." It could even be graded as more or most assisting. Today that construction reads as archaic, so use helpful to instead. Before a noun, as in an assisting officer, the word reads simply as the verb's participle.

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