designing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of design.

   The team is designing a faster engine for next year's model.

   Designing software well requires patience and constant testing.

   Note

   After be it marks a design in progress (is designing an engine); as a gerund it names the activity and still takes a direct object (designing software). The verb once also meant to plan to do something, or to designate, but both uses are obsolete, so the form today carries the sense of planning and making. The same spelling serves the "scheming" adjective, and only context tells them apart.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act or process of planning and creating the form of something.

   The designing of the bridge involved engineers and architects for months.

   Careful designing went into every gallery of the new museum.

   Similarplanning, creation, development, conception

   Note

   The noun can be counted, which the gerund cannot. It takes the and of (the designing of the bridge) and even a plural. Richard Carlile's The Lion (1829) speaks of "the great designings" behind the world. He uses the plural to ask whether the world's realities fit "the theory of omnipotent design" at all. Where the gerund takes its object directly, this noun needs of before whatever is designed.

3. 3
   adjective

   Cleverly scheming and manipulative, acting from hidden, self-serving motives.

   Like a chess player who smiles warmly while quietly setting a trap.

   The designing courtier whispered lies to turn the king against his own brother.

   She proved a designing partner, steering every deal toward her own profit.

   Similarscheming, calculating, manipulative, conniving, crafty

   Oppositeguileless, ingenuous, artless, straightforward

   Note

   Here the planning has turned into a trait of character: a designing man is one with designs on others, not one at a drawing board. Unlike the participle, it is a true adjective that grades (more designing, most designing), and it sits naturally before a noun for a person. Its near-synonyms artful and scheming share its disapproval, so it is never a compliment.

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