effecting

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of effect.

   The committee is effecting sweeping reforms to the tax code this year.

   Effecting a merger of this size requires regulatory approval.

   Note

   The participle keeps effect's transitive grammar, so something is always being brought about: effecting change, effecting a merger. As a gerund it can head a subject phrase (Effecting a merger takes time). The same spelling also appears as a slip for affecting. If the meaning is "influencing" rather than "bringing about," the word wanted is affecting, the same neighbor that may have shaped the adjective.

2. 2
   adjective

   Causing a result; tending to bring something about.

   Critics doubted whether the reform was truly effecting or merely symbolic.

   Observers praised the agency's effecting response to the flooding.

   Similareffective, effectual, productive

   Oppositeineffective, ineffectual, futile

   Note

   An adjective made from the verb: effect plus -ing, perhaps nudged along by effective, by affecting, or by both. It is gradable, so it takes more and most: a more effecting response, the most effecting measure. In everyday prose effective usually does this work, and a listener may hear affecting instead. Use it where the reader cannot mistake causing a result for being emotionally moving.

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