contenting

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of content.

   Contenting a divided committee is no easy task.

   Her manager kept contenting himself with vague promises about the budget.

   Note

   The verb behind this form is transitive, so the -ing form needs someone to satisfy: contenting a committee, or reflexively contenting oneself with less than was hoped for. Older texts can carry an obsolete sense of paying or requiting, in which contenting someone meant giving them what they were owed. When no object follows and the word describes a thing, it has become the "pleasing" adjective.

2. 2
   adjective

   Producing a sense of contentment; pleasing or satisfying.

   Like the settled calm that follows finishing a long, hard task.

   She found the slow, contenting routine of farm life suited her perfectly.

   There is something quietly contenting about watching rain fall on a still afternoon.

   Similarsatisfying, pleasing, gratifying, fulfilling, soothing

   Oppositeunsatisfying, frustrating

   Note

   An adjective for the cause rather than the feeling: a contenting answer or afternoon is what leaves someone content, while the person left that way is contented. It grades like any adjective, as in very contenting or far more contenting, and it sits easily in plain prose. Virginia Woolf's diary in 1923 expects an afternoon on the grass at the Horse Show to be "very contenting."

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