informing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of inform.

   The committee is informing residents of the upcoming road closures.

   Informing the public quickly became the agency's top priority.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs. It forms the progressive (is informing residents) and the verbal noun (informing the public). Either way it can carry any meaning of inform, including giving shape or character, as in an idea informing a whole book, and acting as an informer. If it accepts more or most, it has become the archaic adjective.

2. 2
   adjectivearchaic

   Conveying knowledge or instruction; instructive and educational.

   Her letters were always informing, teaching him much about the wider world.

   The old tutor delivered an informing discourse on the motion of the stars.

   Note

   A period word now. In Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped (1886), the narrator says Mr. Riach told him "many curious things, and some that were informing." There it follows a linking verb and means instructive. In present-day prose it sounds deliberately old-fashioned, and informative is the ordinary choice. Use it only when you want that older literary tone.

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