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. intended to be worn
   • Clothes used to be called wearing apparel
2. causing tiredness
   • 2014 August 17, Jonathan Beckman, “Chasing Lost Time: the Life of C K Scott Moncrieff, Soldier, Spy and Translator by Jean Findlay, review: 'cherishes inconsequential events': Translating Proust’s life work was more a labour than a love for C K Scott Moncrieff [print version: Trouble ahead, 16 August 2014, pp. R24–R25]”, 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

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.
   • Shakespeare

     Give me my nightly wearing and adieu.

wearing

1. present participle of wear

• hard-wearing (or hardwearing, hard wearing)

• Wareing, Wiganer, Winegar