rewarding
Americanadjective
-
affording satisfaction, valuable experience, or the like; worthwhile.
-
affording financial or material gain; profitable.
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of rewarding
Explanation
Things that satisfy you or make you happy are rewarding. Even if you love to learn, the most rewarding part of going to school for many of us is making good friends. The word reward is obvious when you look at the adjective rewarding, and rewarding things do give you a kind of reward. Rather than cash for finding a neighbor's lost cat, though, the reward you get from something rewarding is pleasure or satisfaction. Watching a great movie is rewarding, and so is doing something kind for another person. You might even get lucky and have a rewarding career, or even a rewarding life.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
I don’t find it rewarding, and, realistically, I’m never going to make enough money for the stress and responsibility to meaningfully change my life.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 20, 2026
Whether or not you agree, “Power Surge” makes for a dense but rewarding narrative with its cast of CEOs and filmmakers who strut across—and occasionally fall off—the stage.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026
“Instead of rewarding their business, StubHub sold them World Cup tickets that they either could not provide or on speculation, only to be stranded, in many cases, at the stadium gates without any recourse.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 9, 2026
Filippenko added, "To see a clear effect of Einstein's general theory of relativity is always exciting, but seeing it for the first time in a supernova is especially rewarding."
From Science Daily ● Jul. 6, 2026
What he did was establish himself as the father of underwater archaeology and introduce the world to an enormously rewarding scientific discipline.
From "Shipwrecked!" by Martin W. Sandler
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
