dismissing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of dismiss.

   The board is dismissing several senior employees this week.

   Dismissing the complaint outright struck many people as unfair.

   Note

   Every meaning of dismiss takes a direct object, so the participle nearly always carries one: dismissing staff, dismissing a fear, dismissing a claim. When the meaning is discarding with disdain, it often adds as, as in dismissing the idea as nonsense. When it stands before a noun with no object of its own, as in a dismissing glance, it has become the adjective meaning "dismissive".

2. 2
   adjective

   Treating a person, idea, or concern as unworthy of serious attention or consideration.

   The manager's dismissing remark suggested the proposal wasn't worth discussing.

   She answered with a dismissing shrug, as if the question barely deserved a reply.

   Similardisdainful, contemptuous, scornful, offhand, cavalier

   Oppositerespectful, attentive, receptive

   Note

   A full adjective, not just a participle borrowed for the occasion: it grades, as in the most dismissing of smiles, and it takes of before its target, as in very dismissing of people not true to their word. Its meaning matches dismissive, the far more common choice. Judith Kay Nelson's What Made Freud Laugh (2012) uses it of a dismissing patient, with whom laughter may help build the therapeutic attachment bond.

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