ruining

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of ruin.

   The flood is slowly ruining the old wooden floors.

   Critics accused the developer of ruining the historic neighborhood.

   Note

   The form that carries ruin into the progressive and into gerund phrases: the flood is ruining the floors, or ruining the ending for everyone. Almost every living use takes a direct object, because the current senses of ruin are transitive: bankrupting a firm, wrecking a plan, spoiling a story's twist. The intransitive use, a building ruining into decay, is obsolete, so "the abbey was ruining" now reads as a mistake.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act or process by which something is destroyed or badly damaged.

   The gradual ruining of the coastline alarmed local residents.

   Years of neglect led to the ruining of the once-grand mansion.

   Similardestruction, devastation, wrecking, spoiling

   Oppositepreservation, restoration

   Note

   Here ruining is a true noun, and its grammar shows it. It takes an article and hands its object over to of, as in the ruining of the coastline, where the gerund says ruining the coastline directly. Because it is a countable noun, it even has a plural, ruinings. When the resulting state is meant rather than the process, the plain noun ruin is the word to reach for.

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