preventing
- 1Present participle and gerund of prevent.
The new safety rules are preventing a great many workplace accidents.
Preventing the spread of the disease required careful coordination between hospitals.
Note
One -ing form does two jobs. After be it builds the progressive (the rules are preventing accidents), and as a gerund it acts as a noun that can open a sentence or follow a preposition. Either way it keeps the verb's pattern of stopping someone from doing something: preventing workers from falling. In older writing, watch for a different meaning: going before or anticipating someone, not stopping them.
preventing is a form of prevent
prevent, verb: To stop a particular event from happening, or to stop a particular person or thing from doing something. Full entry
- Spelling
- prevent → preventing: add -ing
Use it in a sentence
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