sanctioning

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of sanction.

   The council is sanctioning several officials over the recent abuses.

   Sanctioning the proposal required a unanimous vote of the board.

   Note

   The -ing form does two grammatical jobs. After a form of be it is a verb in progress (the council is sanctioning officials). At the head of a phrase it is a gerund doing a noun's work (sanctioning the proposal took a vote). Either way it keeps the verb's split meaning: to sanction can be to approve or to penalize. The object usually settles which. A proposal gets approved; officials get punished.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The action performed by someone who sanctions something: either granting official approval or imposing a penalty.

   Formal sanctioning of the agreement cleared the way for construction to begin.

   The committee's sanctioning of the rogue member dragged on for months.

   Similarapproval, authorization, ratification, punishment, disciplining

   Note

   Here the -ing word has become a full noun, and it behaves like one. It takes adjectives and an of-phrase (formal sanctioning of the agreement), and it even has a plural, sanctionings. That is the test for telling it from the verbal gerund, which takes a direct object instead (sanctioning the proposal). The approve-or-punish ambiguity carries over unchanged.

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