deserving

1. 1
   adjective

   Worthy of reward or praise; having earned good treatment through genuine merit.

   The scholarship went to a deserving candidate from a low-income background.

   Critics called him a deserving recipient of the lifetime achievement award.

   Similarworthy, meritorious

   Oppositeundeserving, unworthy

   Note

   Praise packed into a single word, usually set before the noun it approves: the deserving poor, a deserving candidate. Used this way it needs no complement, because the good outcome goes without saying. When the outcome has to be named, English switches to the "deserving of" construction, which can point toward punishment as readily as reward.

2. 2
   adjective

   Meriting reward or punishment; having earned a particular outcome through one's conduct.

   The judge considered him fully deserving of the harsh sentence.

   The volunteers proved themselves deserving of the town's gratitude.

   Similarworthy

   Oppositeundeserving, unworthy

   Note

   Here the word stands after the verb and names its outcome with of: deserving of punishment, of gratitude, of record. It can attach to things as well as people. Railway Magazine in September 1941 calls the opening of Fenchurch Street station "deserving of record." The phrase is a weightier way of saying something deserves to be recorded, and it suits measured, formal prose.

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of deserve.

   Deserving a second chance and actually getting one are two different things.

   He insisted he had never done anything deserving such harsh treatment.

   Note

   The verb's -ing form has the same spelling as the praising adjective and the noun. A direct object tells you it is the verb: deserving recognition, deserving a promotion. Deserve describes a state, so it rarely appears in continuous tenses. The form shows up more often as a gerund or modifier. In older texts it may carry deserve's obsolete senses of earning, rewarding or serving.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   Merit; that which a person earns or becomes entitled to by their conduct.

   Like wages that match exactly how much work someone put in.

   Justice gives each person reward in proportion to their deserving.

   The estate was divided strictly by each heir's deserving.

   Similarmerit, desert, worth, due

   Note

   As a noun it often turns plural and counts a person's merits one by one. Jonathan Swift, in The Examiner of 1711, writes of the value every man "puts upon his own deservings from the publick." Its close relative is the noun desert, which survives mainly in the fixed phrase just deserts. Deservings is the softer, more personal word: what someone has earned, seen from their side.

Showing meanings only. Show all 4