DictionaryAI

missing

MIS-ing/ˈmɪsɪŋ/

4 meanings of missing

Practice

  1. 1
    cannot be foundadjective
    Not in the place where it should be or is expected to be, and often unable to be found; lost or absent.

    Investigators searched the woods for the missing hiker.

    A page was missing from the report, so the figures didn't add up.

    UsageOften after a verb: a child goes missing, a page is missing from the report; soldiers are missing in action.

    Note

    In military casualty lists it is part of a fixed formula. The 1808 "State of Public Affairs in September" tallies "180 killed and missing in action", the phrase that survives as missing in action.

  2. 2
    verb
    Present participle and gerund of miss.

    I'm missing the meeting because my train was delayed.

    Missing her chance at the title, she vowed to train harder next year.

    Note

    The -ing form does two jobs. After be it builds the progressive (she is missing the meeting), and on its own it names the act (missing the train cost her the day). It carries every sense of miss, from failing to hit to feeling someone's absence, as in I'm missing you already. The same spelling, miss plus -ing, also gives the adjective for what is lost: in the missing keys it is an adjective, not a verb.

    Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 1 fact

    • Missing is formed from miss plus -ing and functions as its present participle and gerund. en.wiktionary.org

Less common meanings

  1. 3
    noun
    A data value that is absent from a dataset, where a measurement was expected but was never recorded or was lost.
    The treatment of missings is a problem in statistical software.
    1997, S. Klinke, Data Structures for Computational Statistics
  2. 4
    adjective
    Of an internal combustion engine: running roughly because of an occasional lost spark or other intermittent fault.

missing is a form of miss

miss, verb: To fail to attend, experience, or take advantage of something. Full entry

Forms
missmisses he/she/itmissing -ing formmissed past tense, past participle
Spelling
miss → missing: add -ing

Use it in a sentence

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Origin

Formed from "miss" combined with the suffix "-ing".

Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 1 fact