discouraging

1. 1
   adjective

   Tending to make a person lose hope, confidence, or the will to keep going.

   The coach's discouraging tone left the players unsure of themselves.

   Early sales figures were discouraging, but the team pressed on anyway.

   Similardisheartening, demoralizing, dispiriting, depressing, disappointing

   Oppositeencouraging, heartening, inspiring, promising

   Note

   Its best-known appearance is in Brewster Higley's "A Home on the Range" (1876): "where never is heard a discouraging word." Words, news and results are what typically get called discouraging, and disheartening is its closest neighbor. Like any true adjective it grades freely: very discouraging, less discouraging than expected.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of discourage.

   The manager is discouraging staff from working unpaid overtime.

   Constantly discouraging new ideas, the committee stifled any innovation.

   Note

   The verb at work, carrying both transitive meanings of discourage. One takes away heart: the setbacks kept discouraging her. The other steers someone off a course, and it usually brings a from-phrase with it: discouraging staff from working unpaid overtime. After very or seems, the word has crossed into the adjective for what disheartens.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The act or process of taking away someone's hope, confidence, or will to continue.

   The discouraging of dissent became official policy under the new regime.

   Years of quiet discouraging had drained her ambition completely.

   Similarsuppression, deterrence, dissuasion, demoralization, undermining

   Oppositeencouragement, support, promotion

   Note

   Here the gerund has hardened into a countable noun, so it can take a plural: discouragings, the separate blows to someone's hope. Lydia Ann Barclay writes in an 1841 letter of health dwindling "through letting in the enemy's discouragings." Discouragement covers the same ground in ordinary prose. The -ing noun keeps a sense of acts repeated over time.

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