discounting

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The act or process of taking off part of a charge, debt, or similar amount owed.

   Seasonal discounting drives most of the chain's revenue in late December.

   The bank's discounting of the overdue invoice gave the supplier some breathing room.

   Similarprice-cutting, markdown, reduction, deduction

   Note

   Here the word belongs to money. In banking it counts as transactions: a credit bank's discountings of agricultural loans are something it can plan to increase in coming years. Economists stretch the idea to time itself, applying rates of discount that track current interest to weigh future costs. A shop's seasonal markdown and a lender's deduction share one core: part of an amount is given up now.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act or process of dismissing something or someone from consideration as unimportant or unreliable.

   The general's discounting of the early warnings left his troops badly exposed.

   Reflexive discounting of women's reports of pain remains a problem in medicine.

   Similardismissal, disregard, rejection, downplaying

   Oppositeacceptance, acknowledgment, recognition

   Note

   The dismissive sense counts easily, so the plural names separate acts of belittling. Luciano L'Abate's The Self in the Family (1997) lists discountings among the ordinary hurts, beside snubs, put-downs and rejections. That company sets the tone: this is dismissal that wounds, not neutral doubt. In the singular it usually takes of plus whatever is set aside, as in the discounting of a warning or of a witness.

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle of discount.

   The airline is discounting fares on midweek flights to fill empty seats.

   Critics are discounting the rumors as baseless gossip.

   Note

   The verb form takes its object directly, and that is how to tell it from the noun spelled the same way. Discounting the rumors is the verb; the discounting of the rumors is the dismissive noun. Nearly every sense of discount is transitive, from cutting fares to lending against a bill. One sense looks ahead: to be discounting an event is to anticipate it and draw conclusions before it happens.

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