forbidding

Pluralforbiddings

1. 1
   adjective

   Seeming threatening, unfriendly, or likely to be unpleasant.

   The cliffs rose dark and forbidding above the narrow harbor.

   His forbidding expression discouraged anyone from approaching the desk.

   Similargrim, bleak, gloomy, uninviting, dark

   Oppositewelcoming, inviting, approachable

   Note

   The adjective keeps the verb inside it: a forbidding face, coast or night seems to warn you off. That is why its natural opposites are inviting and welcoming. It describes how something meets your approach, as in Jane Austen's "most forbidding, disagreeable countenance" or Emily Post's "cold, forbidding blankness" of an empty page. Unlike the verb form, it grades: more forbidding, most forbidding.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of forbid.

   The new policy is forbidding overtime without prior approval.

   Doctors are increasingly forbidding smoking in shared spaces.

   Note

   The verb form always has something to forbid: forbidding overtime, forbidding him entry. That object is the quickest way to tell it from the "threatening" adjective, which stands alone and describes rather than prohibits. As a gerund it heads a noun phrase (forbidding smoking worked). With two objects it follows forbid's warn-off pattern, as in forbidding a guest the house.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   An act by which something is prohibited; a prohibition or ban.

   The council's forbidding of new construction halted the development for years.

   A formal forbidding of the old custom was issued the next morning.

   Similarprohibition, ban, interdiction, proscription

   Oppositepermission, authorization

   Note

   A true countable noun, unlike the gerund: it takes an article, an of-phrase and a plural. Shakespeare's Lucrece (1594) has "all these poor forbiddings," and St. John G. Ervine's The Foolish Lovers (1920) calls law a matter of "hindrances and obstacles and forbiddings." In the plural it names a whole run of restraints rather than a single ruling.

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