disagreeing

Pluraldisagreeings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of disagree.

   The committee members were disagreeing loudly over the new budget.

   Disagreeing with your boss in front of clients can be risky.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs. After a form of be it builds the progressive (they were disagreeing), and on its own it acts as a verbal noun that can be a subject or object. Because disagree is intransitive, neither use takes a direct object, so the person or point disagreed with follows a preposition. It also carries the verb's second meaning, of two things failing to correspond.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The condition of not agreeing, or the difference of opinion that exists between people who hold opposing views.

   The endless disagreeing between the two departments delayed the project for months.

   Public disagreeing among the party leaders shook the voters' confidence.

   Similardisagreement, bickering, quarreling, wrangling, discord

   Oppositeagreement, consensus, harmony

   Note

   Here the word has become a full noun, unlike the verbal gerund. It takes articles, adjectives and a plural. Bentley's Miscellany in 1845 has the people receiving "all the buffets of their disagreeings," where the plural counts separate quarrels like blows that land on others. Modification is the test. An endless disagreeing is this noun, while disagreeing loudly, with an adverb, is still the verb at work.

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