Trying
//ˈtɹaɪ.ɪŋ// adj, noun, verb
adj, noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 The act by which one tries something; an attempt.
"In a variety of places, O'Shaughnessy argues that there is an internal relation between trying and the events that tryings produce. For example, he argues that tryings are not independently specifiable except as would-be causes of physical events."
Verb
- 1 present participle and gerund of try form-of, gerund, participle, present
Adjective
- 1 Difficult to endure; arduous.
""Do you not find," he said, "that with your short sight it is a little trying to do so much typewriting?""
- 2 Irritating, stressful or bothersome.
Adjective
- 1 extremely irritating to the nerves wordnet
- 2 hard to endure wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"I'm so dumb... I'm trying to explain things to you that I don't understand myself."
Etymology
From try + -ing.
More for "trying"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.