controlling

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of control.

   Controlling inflation became the central bank's top priority that year.

   The new software is controlling temperature across all the labs.

   Note

   Every meaning of the verb travels with this form, including the laboratory one. Researchers speak of controlling for age or income, meaning they design a study so that those variables drop out of the result. As a gerund it takes its object directly (controlling inflation), while the noun needs of (the controlling of inflation). That is the quickest test of which one a sentence is using.

2. 2
   adjectiveBritish

   Inclined to exert control or dominance over a person, thing, or situation, often in an overbearing way.

   Their controlling manager dictated every detail of the project.

   Critics described the regime as deeply controlling toward the press.

   Similardomineering, overbearing, dictatorial, authoritarian, bossy

   Oppositepermissive, easygoing, lenient

   Note

   A judgment on character more than a description of an act. It is said of people and their ways, as in "His mother is very controlling," and belongs chiefly to British English. It grades like any adjective, with very, more and most, which is how to tell it from the verb form: a committee can be controlling a budget, but nobody is more controlling a budget.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The act or process of exerting control over a person, thing, or situation.

   The controlling of inflation requires careful coordination between several agencies.

   Her tight controlling of every detail eventually slowed the whole team down.

   Similarmanagement, regulation, supervision, containment

   Note

   Unlike the gerund, this noun can be counted and made plural. The Earthen Vessel and Christian Record & Review (1856) praises a soul "free from the reign, and controllings of sin," where controllings names repeated acts of mastery, set beside reign. The plural survives mostly in older devotional writing like this. In modern prose, control itself usually does the job.

Showing meanings only. Show all 4