enacting

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of enact.

   Congress is enacting legislation to ease the housing shortage.

   Enacting the reform required months of careful negotiation.

   Note

   The -ing form does two jobs. After a form of be it builds the progressive (Congress is enacting legislation). In a noun slot it works as a gerund (Enacting the reform took months). In both uses it keeps the verb's direct object with no of in between. It also carries all three of enact's meanings: passing a bill into law, playing a part, or simply carrying something out.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act or process by which a bill or measure is made into law.

   The enacting of the statute marked the end of a decade-long campaign.

   Public protest delayed the enacting of the controversial tax measure.

   Similarpassage, passing, adoption, approval

   Oppositerepeal

   Note

   A noun in full, able to take a plural and count individual acts of lawmaking. William Cobbett, in Cobbett's Weekly Register of 1824, writes of "the divers most curious votings and enactings of this House", pairing it with another -ing noun to needle Parliament. It means the same as enactment. Unlike the verb form, it takes the and of rather than a direct object: the enacting of the statute.

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