ending

[en-ding]

noun

1. a bringing or coming to an end; termination; close.

   Putting away the Christmas ornaments marked the ending of the season.

2. the final or concluding part; conclusion.

   a story with a happy ending.

3. death; destruction.

4. Grammar.,  a morpheme, especially an inflection, at the end of a word, as -s in cuts.

5. (not in technical use) any final word part, as the -ow of widow.

ending

/ ˈɛndɪŋ /

noun

1. the act of bringing to or reaching an end

2. the last part of something, as a book, film, etc

3. the final part of a word, esp a suffix

4. chess another word for endgame

Other Word Forms

• unending adjective
• unendingly adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of ending¹

First recorded before 1000; Middle English endyng, Old English endung; equivalent to end ¹ + -ing ¹

Example Sentences

He has since abandoned that pledge, saying that ending the war is proving harder than he expected.

Read more on BBC

Thomas-Asante converted his seventh and eighth goals of the season as Coventry took another step towards ending a 25-year absence from the Premier League.

Read more on Barron's

Shares of Google clawed back some of their earlier losses by market close, ending the day down 2.1%.

Read more on MarketWatch

These shapes, which were sometimes thousands of miles apart, weren’t natural formations: Defined by stone walls, they tapered over large stretches of terrain, ending at enclosures surrounded by curious circular shapes.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

European leaders have joined Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky in insisting that any talks on ending the war in Ukraine should start with freezing the current front line, and warned that Russia is not serious about peace.

Read more on BBC

Related Words

• closure 
• completion 
• denouement 
• finale 
• outcome 
• period 
• resolution 

When To Use

What is an ending?

An ending is a conclusion, as in I like stories with a happy ending.An ending is also a time when something is finishing or nearing completion, as in I’m ending my school career with all As. An ending is the opposite of a beginning and is used to mean the conclusion of something. Movies have endings. So do civilizations, like the Roman Empire. We even sometimes refer to a person’s death as an ending. Endings and the reasons or events surrounding them are often intensely studied or debated.Example: I liked the book until the terrible ending where the villain won in the last chapter.