comforting

1. 1
   adjective

   Giving comfort by easing someone's worry, sadness, or distress.

   A comforting cup of tea was waiting when she got home.

   His steady voice was deeply comforting to the grieving family.

   Similarsoothing, reassuring, consoling, heartening

   Oppositedistressing, upsetting, disturbing, alarming

   Note

   The adjective proper, as opposed to the verb form: it takes degree, so something can be more comforting, most comforting or deeply comforting. It often sits in the frame it's comforting to know that…, where the comfort comes from a fact rather than a person, and it pairs naturally with words or a voice. If a direct object follows, as in comforting the survivors, you are looking at the verb instead.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of comfort.

   The nurse was comforting frightened patients throughout the evening.

   Volunteers are comforting the survivors at the shelter.

   Note

   Paired with be, it builds the progressive (was comforting frightened patients). Without be, the same spelling works as a gerund, as in comforting strangers takes patience. The verb behind it once reached further than soothing: older English used comfort to mean strengthen or fortify, and simply to aid or help. Those senses are now obsolete, so a modern reader meets only the consoling one.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The act of giving comfort to someone.

   The comforting of the wounded soldiers went on through the night.

   She found purpose in the comforting of those who mourned.

   Similarconsolation, soothing, reassurance

   Note

   Here the noun can take a plural, which turns the single act into a series of small mercies. Alexander Slidell Mackenzie's The American in England (1836) has its writer cheered by "the comfortings of a coal fire", and there the comfort does not come from a person at all. In the singular, the noun usually takes of to name who is being comforted: the comforting of the bereaved.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3