Showing Results for "defining"

See Also:

• present participle of define.

defining

American  

[dih-fahy-ning] / dɪˈfaɪ nɪŋ /

adjective

1. decisive; critically important.

   Taking a course in architecture was a defining turn in her life.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• self-defining
  adjective
• nondefining
  adjective

Explanation

Something defining is essential to what something is. A defining moment in your life helps makes you what you are. In the dictionary, definitions tell you what words mean, and the similar word defining has to do with what things are too. The defining characteristic of a chair is that you sit on it. The defining feature of food is you can eat it. People have defining features too: if you went to a summer camp and had an amazing time, it could be a defining time in your life. Defining things helps shape and mold us.

Example Sentences

“Neuromancer,” one of the defining cyberpunk novels, was published in 1988; that book imagines an interconnected, virtual reality world you can traverse by “jacking in.”

From Salon • Jun. 8, 2026

By defining these perceptual attributes more rigorously, the researchers have supplied a missing piece in Schrödinger's long standing vision for a closed mathematical model of color.

From Science Daily • Jun. 7, 2026

Badenoch took issue with Matt Goodwin's stress on ethnicity as the key factor in defining Englishness.

From BBC • Jun. 5, 2026

Yet audiences in the thousands were turning up nightly to see Gibbard reanimate the peak-millennial classics that made him one of indie rock’s defining stars.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 5, 2026

And in defining, in giving organization to the fury, it seemed to spin me around, and in my mind I was looking backward over the days since Clifton's death .

From "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison