hurting

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of hurt.

   His shoulder was hurting badly by the end of the shift.

   Hurting someone you love leaves a mark on you too.

   Note

   One -ing form carries the verb both ways. With an object it points at whoever causes the pain (hurting someone you love). Without one, the sore part becomes the subject (his shoulder was hurting). That painful-to-feel use is stative, yet it sits easily in the progressive: my back hurts and my back is hurting say nearly the same thing. Unlike the noun for a pain, it never takes a plural.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   A painful sensation, felt either physically or emotionally.

   A dull hurting spread through his shoulders after the accident.

   The hurting of betrayal lingered long after the friendship ended.

   Similarpain, ache, aching, anguish

   Note

   What sets this noun apart is that it counts. The plural hurtings lets a pain be treated as a thing someone has, one item among others. Philosophers of mind make use of exactly that. Michael Tye's Ten Problems of Consciousness (1997) asks whether anyone else can be the subject of "my very hurtings or my very itchings," pairing it with another -ing noun for a private sensation.

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