consenting

1. 1
   adjective

   Giving consent; willing to agree to or permit something.

   Researchers may only enroll consenting participants in the trial.

   A consenting partner makes the whole arrangement much simpler.

   Similarwilling, acquiescent

   Oppositeunconsenting

   Note

   Here the word describes the people who agree, not what they do. Its stock phrase is consenting adults, a phrase heard most in arguments about where the law should step back. Agreement does not always settle the matter: payment for sex can stay prohibited even between consenting adults. Its plain opposite is unconsenting. For the act itself, see the sense describing the act.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of consent.

   Consenting to the merger, the directors approved the contract that afternoon.

   His consenting to the search later undercut his lawyer's argument at trial.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty, as participle and as verbal noun. Because consent is mainly intransitive, it needs to before its object: consenting to the merger, consenting to leave. Two transitive uses break that pattern. Consenting a patient means getting them to sign a consent form. The obsolete consenting a request meant granting it. Don't confuse that obsolete use with the modern one.

3. 3
   adjective

   Engaged in or carried out with the agreement of every person involved.

   His lawyer argued that the encounter had been a consenting one and that no crime took place.

   Privacy advocates insist the state has no business policing consenting sex between adults in their own homes.

   Similarconsensual, voluntary

   Oppositeunconsenting

   Note

   The adjective moves from the person to the act: consenting sex, a consenting encounter. The consent belongs to everyone involved, not to one willing party. That makes the phrase carry weight in legal argument, where calling an encounter consenting is a claim that no crime occurred.

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