enterprising

1. 1
   adjective

   Skilled and inventive in handling business dealings or getting ahead in life.

   The enterprising merchant opened three new shops in a single year.

   No one was more enterprising when it came to building useful connections.

   Similarresourceful, entrepreneurial, ambitious, inventive, industrious

   Oppositeunenterprising, unambitious

   Note

   Here the daring of the courageous meaning turns practical. The enterprising person spots an opening and takes it, whether in trade or in society. Letitia Elizabeth Landon's Francesca Carrara (1834) applies the word to winning popularity and getting on socially. The adjective is gradable, and it compares with more and most (more enterprising, most enterprising), never with -er or -est.

2. 2
   adjective

   Showing courage and daring in taking on a difficult task.

   The enterprising explorers set out to cross the desert entirely on foot.

   Only an enterprising pilot would attempt a landing in weather that bad.

   Similarbold, daring, adventurous, intrepid, venturesome

   Oppositetimid, unadventurous, cautious

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The undertaking of a venture, or purposeful activity in general; the things a person or group does.

   What gives these enterprisings their political character are the contentions, claims and experiences of the other.

   2010, Melvin Pollner, Mundane Reason: Reality in Everyday and Sociological Discourse

   Note

   Unlike the adjectives, the -ing word here is a countable noun, and it takes a plural. Melvin Pollner's Mundane Reason (2010) speaks of "these enterprisings" and their political character. The form keeps the activity itself in view, the ongoing doings of people, rather than the venture as a finished thing.

4. 4
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of enterprise.

   Note

   The -ing form of enterprise used as a verb. Without an object it means venturing on something hard. With an object it means undertaking a task. An obsolete use meant housing or entertaining a guest. The same spelling is also an adjective, so position decides the reading. Before a noun, as in an enterprising young founder, it is the resourceful adjective, not this verb form.

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