enabling

Pluralenablings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of enable.

   The grant is enabling researchers to expand their fieldwork this year.

   Enabling remote access requires careful planning around security.

   Note

   Every meaning of enable carries over into its -ing form. These include giving someone the means (a grant enabling researchers), switching on a circuit or feature, and tacitly excusing someone's behavior. As a gerund it still takes a direct object (enabling remote access). Once it takes a plural or stands as a noun with its own article, it has become the countable noun.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   An act or instance of something being made possible or activated.

   The enabling of the emergency protocol prevented a far larger disaster.

   Several enablings of the override were logged during the test run.

   Similaractivation

   Oppositedeactivation

   Note

   The noun can be counted, which the gerund cannot. It takes a plural, enablings, and so can name separate occurrences. Andrew J. McCauley's Crossing the Threshold of Confusion (2010) pairs "cover-ups and enablings" of abuse. There the word leans toward enable's sense of tacitly excusing wrongdoing, not toward switching something on, so context decides which kind of enabling is meant.

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