growing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of grow.

   The company's profits are growing steadily this year.

   She watched the crowd growing larger near the stage.

   Note

   The -ing form of grow does several jobs at once. With be it builds the progressive (profits are growing). Before a noun it works as a modifier (a growing concern, growing pains). Because grow can also link a subject to a description, it can take an adjective after it (growing larger, growing tired). Transitive grow carries over as well: growing tomatoes.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   An increase or growth in size, amount, or degree over time.

   The steady growing of the audience pleased the performers all evening.

   Economists tracked the slow growing of household debt across the decade.

   Similarincrease, rise, expansion

   Oppositedecrease, decline

   Note

   A close relative of growth, and like growth it can be counted as well as not. Henry Howe's Historical Collections of the Great West (1852) uses the plural for the gradual rise of a sensation: emigrants who weakened "without, however, experiencing the growings of hunger." In the singular it usually comes with the and of, as in the steady growing of the audience.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The raising or cultivation of plants and crops.

   The growing of coffee depends heavily on altitude and climate.

   Her family has dedicated generations to the growing of tea on these hillsides.

   Similarcultivation, farming, production

   Note

   Most at home in front of another noun, as in the growing season, the stretch of the year when plants can be raised. When a crop is named, it takes the and of (the growing of coffee), and that marks it as a noun. Drop them (growing coffee) and you are back to the verb form taking an object.

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