terminating

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of terminate.

   The agency is terminating the agreement after repeated breaches.

   Terminating a long employee relationship requires careful handling.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. In "the agency is terminating the deal" it is a verb in progress; in "terminating a contract takes care" it names the act as a noun. The object decides the meaning. Terminating a cable means fitting it with a proper end, and terminating an employee means dismissal. As a euphemism it can even mean killing, so choose the object with care.

2. 2
   adjective

   Coming to an end; drawing to a close.

   The terminating clause of the treaty took effect at midnight.

   A terminating tone signaled that the recording had reached its end.

   Similarfinal, closing, concluding

   Oppositeopening, initial, beginning

3. 3
   adjective

   Describing a decimal that has a finite number of digits, ending rather than repeating endlessly.

   Because the denominator divides a power of ten, the fraction yields a terminating decimal.

   Students learn to tell a terminating decimal from one that repeats forever.

   Similarfinite

   Oppositerepeating, recurring

   Note

   A mathematician's contrast term: every rational number comes out either as a terminating decimal or as a recurring one, so the two are learned as a pair. Which you get depends on the fraction in lowest terms. If its denominator has no prime factors other than 2 and 5, as in 3/8 or 7/20, the digits stop. In this sense the word almost always sits directly before decimal.

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