evacuating
- 1Present participle and gerund of evacuate.
Firefighters spent the morning evacuating residents from the smoke-filled tower.
Evacuating the coastal villages before the storm saved countless lives.
Note
The -ing form carries over a verb that is unusually flexible about its object. A crew can be evacuating a building or evacuating the people inside it: the place emptied and the people removed both fit. So does a vessel being emptied or a vacuum being drawn. In bodily contexts the same form means discharging the bowels or bladder, so only the surrounding words separate a clinical note from a news bulletin.
evacuating is a form of evacuate
evacuate, verb: To cause or help people to leave or withdraw from a place, especially to protect them from danger. Full entry
- Spelling
- evacuate → evacuating: drop the e, add -ing
Use it in a sentence
Write your own sentence with evacuating, and AI will tell you whether it fits and which meaning you used.