damaging

1. 1
   adjective

   Causing damage; harmful or injurious to a person, object, or reputation.

   The report contained several damaging claims about the company's finances.

   Years of harsh sunlight proved damaging to the painting's colors.

   Similarharmful, injurious, detrimental, hurtful, destructive

   Oppositebeneficial

   Note

   The participle has hardened into an adjective, and grading shows the change. Something can be very damaging, more damaging or especially damaging, which the verb form cannot be. The adjective names the victim with to, as in damaging to children or damaging to a reputation. It sits comfortably beside qualifiers such as particularly damaging, but often ignored. Its opposites are beneficial and the plainer undamaging.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of damage.

   The constant criticism is damaging her confidence.

   Damaging the equipment carelessly will cost the company thousands.

   Note

   Here the word still needs an object: criticism is damaging her confidence, not simply damaging. The older intransitive use, in which goods were damaging in the sense of taking harm, is obsolete. One specialized use survives on the shop floor, where staff damaging a returned item are pulling it from sale as unsalable. The object is also what tells this verb apart from the gradable adjective.

3. 3
   noun

   Gerund of damage: the act of causing damage.

   The deliberate damaging of evidence is a serious offense.

   The slow damaging of the coastline worries local fishermen.

   Note

   A verbal noun that names the act rather than the result: the damage is what remains, and the damaging is what someone did. It usually takes the and an of-phrase for the thing harmed, as in the damaging of evidence. It can even go plural. In Dickens's Household Words of 1855, proofs are cleared of a character's "weakenings and damagings of her own effects."

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