What does "distinguishing" mean?

The act by which something is distinguished or told apart.

Distinguishing

Common synonyms include: accurate, appreciative, characteristic, characterizing, contrastive, critical.

adj, noun, verb

adj, noun, verb ·4 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Noun

1
The act by which something is distinguished or told apart.
"There are not only these identifyings going on, but also there are distinguishings. For just as in the example above there are identifications of the various extents, there are distinguishings of these extents."

Verb

1
present participle and gerund of distinguish form-of, gerund, participle, present

Adjective

1
That serves to distinguish.
"It has no obvious distinguishing characteristics, and therefore people are constantly ascribing to it the characteristics of other similar species."

"Boris has a difficult time distinguishing good wines from bad, especially after a few glasses."

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.