disliking

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of dislike.

   He found himself disliking the noise of the city more than he had expected.

   Disliking confrontation, she quietly left the meeting before it began.

   Note

   As a transitive form it wants an object: disliking the noise, disliking confrontation. That object has not always been the thing disliked. In an obsolete use the verb ran the other way, so a thing could be disliking a person, meaning displeasing or offending them. Online it has also picked up a narrower use: disliking a post means casting a vote against it, not just feeling aversion.

2. 2
   noun

   Gerund of dislike.

   The likings and dislikings of society, or of some powerful portion of it, are thus the main thing which has practically determined the rules laid down for general observance, under the penalties of law or opinion.

   1859, John Stuart Mill, “Introductory”

   Note

   A verbal noun that can take a plural, dislikings, and so name particular aversions as well as the general feeling. John Stuart Mill sets it beside its opposite in On Liberty (1859), calling "the likings and dislikings of society" the real source of the rules people are made to follow. The plain noun dislike covers the same ground, so the -ing form sits most naturally in such matched pairs.

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