conserving

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of conserve.

   Conserving fuel became a priority for every household during the shortage.

   The trust is conserving the wetlands to protect rare birds.

   Note

   One spelling does two grammatical jobs. It builds the progressive (the trust is conserving the wetlands), and as a gerund it names the activity itself (conserving fuel became a priority). It also carries every verb meaning of conserve. Saving something for later and protecting a heritage both take an object. The sense of remaining unchanged through a process takes none, so something conserving in that sense stays the same rather than saving anything.

2. 2
   adjective

   Involving or accompanied by conservation; tending to protect resources rather than use them up.

   The museum adopted a conserving strategy for its most fragile manuscripts.

   A conserving use of farmland keeps the soil productive for generations.

   Similarprotective, sustainable, preservative

   Oppositewasteful, exploitative

   Note

   An absolute adjective: a strategy is conserving or it is not, so it takes no more or most. The object is what separates it from the verb form. In the trust is conserving the wetlands, a verb is at work on something. A conserving strategy describes a kind of approach and conserves nothing in particular.

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