congratulating

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of congratulate.

   The crowd was congratulating the marathon finishers as they crossed the line.

   Reporters surrounded the senator, congratulating her on a narrow victory.

   Note

   The -ing form serves both the progressive tenses (she was congratulating them) and the gerund. It shares its spelling with the adjective and the noun for the act. The verb also works reflexively, meaning to count oneself fortunate. Someone congratulating himself on an escape is pleased with his luck, not praising himself aloud. The simple past and past participle are congratulated.

   He sat back, congratulating himself on having missed the storm.

   She was quietly congratulating herself on choosing the earlier train.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of expressing praise or good wishes to someone for an achievement or happy event.

   The congratulating went on for an hour after the prize was announced.

   Amid all the congratulating, she barely had a moment to thank her mentor.

   Similarcongratulations, praise, acclaim, applause, felicitation

   Oppositecriticism, censure, condemnation

   Note

   The noun can be counted, and linguists do count it. In Stephen Barker's 2011 essay "Speech-Acts", congratulatings sit beside apologies and thankings as expressives, acts that voice the speaker's feeling toward someone. Outside that technical setting, it more often names the whole activity without a plural, as when the congratulating goes on all evening.

3. 3
   adjective

   Expressing congratulations; offering praise or good wishes for an achievement.

   The coach wore a congratulating grin as the players left the field.

   Her congratulating remarks set a generous tone for the rest of the ceremony.

   Similarcongratulatory, complimentary, approving, laudatory, celebratory

   Oppositecritical, disapproving, censorious, derogatory

   Note

   Most at home just before a noun for the people gathered around someone's good fortune. Examples include a congratulating friend after the birth of twins, a congratulating crowd surrounding a bride, and a congratulating circle of lawyers after an acquittal. Used this way, it describes the company as much as their words. Congratulatory carries the same meaning, while congratulating keeps the sense of people caught in the act.

4. 4
   adjective

   Giving someone pleasure or satisfaction, as welcome news or a good result does.

   As far as I am aware of, no epidemic diseases exist, which is congratulating to this place.

   1889, Minnesota. State Board of Health, Biennial Report on Vital Statistics of the State of Minnesota

   The inflation has gone down and it has come to a one digit mark. This is a very congratulating feature so far as this Budget is concerned.

   1993, India. Parliament. Lok Sabha, Lok Sabha Debates - Volume 21

   Similargratifying, pleasing, satisfying, welcome, heartening

   Oppositedisappointing, displeasing, disheartening, unwelcome

   Note

   Here the pleasing runs the other way: the good thing itself is congratulating, not the person who praises it. Nineteenth-century magazines applied it to ringing bells, hot weather, cattle-feed results and honey sales, often as very congratulating, and it took to before the person pleased (more congratulating to the majority). Modern readers will hear the "offering congratulations" meaning, so gratifying or pleasing says this more clearly today.

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