respecting

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of respect.

   He believes that respecting other people's time earns their trust.

   The new manager kept respecting the team's established routines.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs inside the verb. After a form of be it is progressive (she is respecting the deadline), and as a subject or object it names the act (respecting a rule takes discipline). Its object can be a person, a custom, a rule or a right. The verb also means 'to relate to; to be concerned with,' and that meaning is where the preposition meaning 'about' comes from.

2. 2
   preposition

   Concerning or in reference to a particular matter; about.

   The committee raised several concerns respecting the proposed budget.

   The archive holds few documents respecting the town's founding.

   Similarconcerning, regarding, about

   Note

   Here the -ing form has stopped acting as a verb. It marks a topic and carries no sense of esteem. Like regarding and considering, it takes a noun phrase directly, with no of or to after it. That matters when reading: in I wrote to him respecting the proposed lawsuit, nobody admires the lawsuit, because the letter is simply about it. If about fits in its place, it is the preposition.

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