Showing results for "pioneering"

• present participle of pioneer.

pioneering

American  

[pahy-uh-neer-ing] / ˌpaɪ əˈnɪər ɪŋ /

adjective

1. being a pioneer, one of the first to settle a region, thus opening it for occupation and development by others.

   This early pioneering family helped open up western Victoria in Australia.

2. being among the first in any field of inquiry or activity; being among those spearheading an initiative of some kind.

   Ours is a pioneering institution, continually advancing the understanding of medicine through groundbreaking research.

3. Ecology. (of an organism) successfully establishing itself in a barren area, thus starting an ecological cycle of life.

   Pioneering species can initiate recovery on drastically disturbed sites like that of the former gas plant.

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noun

1. the act or process of being a pioneer; the early settling of land, or the first forays into some type of activity.

   I read about that forward-thinking doctor in an article on the pioneering of in vitro fertilization.

Other Word Forms

• unpioneering
  adjective

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Etymology

Origin of pioneering

First recorded in 1700–10; pioneer ( def. ) + -ing ² ( def. ) for the adjective senses; pioneer ( def. ) + -ing ¹ ( def. ) for the noun sense

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

pioneering

Moerner received the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering contributions to super-resolution fluorescence microscopy.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 17, 2026

In 1959, Draper’s father was setting up a pioneering venture-capital firm—Draper, Gaither & Anderson, partly financed by the Rockefeller family—in Palo Alto, Calif., and persuaded his son to join that effort.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2026

She also became a pioneering figure in land art, which used the landscape as both site and material.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 13, 2026

At the Pyry Conference near Warsaw in 1939, Polish cryptologists invited French and British counterparts, including Alastair Denniston and Dilly Knox, to share their pioneering success in breaking the German Enigma machine cipher.

From BBC ● Oct. 10, 2026

But I sometimes imagine that he merely slipped during a courageous and pioneering venture in observational geophysics.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

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Related Words

• advanced
• ahead of its time
• experimental
• groundbreaking
• innovative
• innovatory
• inventive
• modern
• new
• original
• progressive
• revolutionary
• state-of-the-art
• trailblazing
• ultramodern
• unorthodox

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