privileging

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of privilege.

   Critics accused the policy of privileging landowners at the expense of tenants.

   Privileging short-term profit, the company slashed its research budget.

   Note

   A spelling that does double duty: it carries the progressive (they are privileging) and the gerund (privileging one group angers another). In current use it means "putting first," and it takes a direct object: you privilege one thing over another. The older senses, granting a right or exempting someone from danger, are archaic, so a modern reader hears preference rather than a formal grant.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The process by which something or someone is granted a special status or advantage over others.

   The privileging of inherited wealth over earned income shaped the entire tax code.

   Reviewers criticized the journal's privileging of already-established scholars.

   Similarfavoring, prioritization, preference

   Oppositemarginalization

   Note

   A true noun, and one that can be counted. Stephen Gersh's Concord in Discourse (2011) uses the plural privilegings to set several acts of favoring harmonic elements side by side. That plural is what separates it from the verb's gerund. The gerund takes a direct object (privileging landowners), while this noun takes of (the privileging of landowners).

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