obliging

1. 1
   adjective

   Willing and eager to help others or do favors for them.

   Our obliging host rearranged the entire schedule to suit our needs.

   The new clerk proved remarkably obliging, locating the file within minutes.

   Similaraccommodating, helpful, cooperative

   Oppositeunhelpful, uncooperative

   Note

   Friendliness built on an old idea of debt: to oblige someone was to do them a favor, and a favor originally put them under an obligation. The adjective keeps only the kindness. It compares with more and most (more obliging, most obliging). Position tells it apart from the verb form: an obliging host describes someone, while obliging the host names an action.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of oblige.

   Obliging the committee's request, she submitted the report a week early.

   He kept obliging customers with small repairs long after closing time.

   Note

   One spelling does three jobs: this verb form, the helpful adjective and a noun. As a participle it follows be (she was obliging the committee). As a gerund it works as a noun phrase that still takes an object (obliging the committee was easy). The object shapes the meaning. With one, it can mean compelling or favoring someone. Without one, it can mean doing a favor or being in someone's debt.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The act of placing someone under an obligation or required duty.

   The obliging of new employees to sign lengthy contracts drew sharp criticism.

   Through the obliging of vassals to military service, the king raised his army.

   Note

   A countable noun of action, with a plural, obligings, and a to-infinitive naming the duty imposed. Alexander MacDonald's Summary of the Catholic Religion (1840) lists "the obligings to do penances" alongside finings and excommunications, a run of church penalties. This is the coercive side of the word, pulling the opposite way from the helpful adjective, so context has to show that the obliging is done to someone.

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