wearing

• (General American) enPR: wĕrʹĭng, IPA^(key): /ˈwɛɹɪŋ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈwɛəɹɪŋ/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛəɹɪŋ
• Homophones: waring, Waring

wearing (comparative more wearing, superlative most wearing)

1. (not comparable) Intended to be worn.

   Clothes used to be called wearing apparel.

2. Causing tiredness; trying to a person's patience.
   • 2014 August 17, Jonathan Beckman, “Chasing Lost Time: the Life of C K Scott Moncrieff, Soldier, Spy and Translator by Jean Findlay, review”, in The Daily Telegraph (Review)‎:

     [The biography] also displays a rather wearing fidelity to chronology that gives rise to too many summer holidays at the beginning of the book and too many royalty statements towards the end.

3. Causing erosion.
4. That wears (deteriorate through use), and may eventually wear out.
   • 1960 December, “The first hundred 25 kV a.c. electric locomotives for B.R.”, in Trains Illustrated, page 727:

     Comparison of the four bogie designs shows that the Rugby-built A.E.I. bogie has the least number of components and a minimum of metallic wearing surfaces.

wearing (plural wearings)

1. The mechanical process of eroding or grinding.
2. The act by which something is worn.

   formal crown-wearings

3. That which is worn; clothes; garments.
   • c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iii]:

     Give me my nightly wearing and adieu.

wearing

1. present participle and gerund of wear

• hard-wearing

• “wearing”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

• Gwinear, Wareing, Wiganer, Winegar