deciding

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of decide.

   The board is deciding whether to relocate the factory.

   Deciding between the two offers took her a full week.

   Note

   One spelling does two verbal jobs. After be it forms continuous tenses (the board is deciding). Standing alone, it heads a noun-like phrase (deciding between offers took a week). Because decide works with or without an object, deciding the case and simply deciding are both normal. Computer scientists say a Turing machine is deciding a problem when it answers correctly on every input. The gerund shades into the noun for the act, which also takes the and of.

2. 2
   adjective

   Producing, or capable of producing, the final outcome of something contested or unsettled.

   The deciding factor in their choice was the lower cost.

   A late penalty proved deciding in a tightly contested final.

   Similardetermining, crucial, key, conclusive

   Note

   An adjective made from the participle of decide, and it does most of its work in fixed pairs before a noun: the deciding factor, the deciding vote, the deciding game. Adam Liptak, reporting on the Supreme Court in 2018, gives Justice Kennedy the deciding vote in closely divided cases. In that phrase it is the one vote that settles the outcome. Comparative forms such as more deciding exist but are rarely needed.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The process of coming to a decision or making up one's mind.

   The deciding fell to the senior partners after weeks of debate.

   Quick deciding under pressure is a skill many leaders lack.

   Note

   This noun names the work of choosing rather than its result. It usually takes no plural and often takes of: Dahlia Lithwick, writing in Slate in 2007, speaks of the actual deciding of cases. Where decision points to the outcome, deciding keeps the reader's eye on the process of getting there. A plural still turns up for separate acts of choice, as in Walter Wangerin Jr.'s Jesus: A Novel (2005): her own decidings.

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