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expecting

verbadjectivenouncommon in dialogue

  • //ɪkˈspɛktɪŋ//
  • //ɛkˈspɛktɪŋ//

Of a woman, female animal, or couple, in expectation of giving birth; pregnant.

verb

  1. 1

    Also a form of expectpresent participle and gerund of expect

adjective

  1. 1

    Of a woman, female animal, or couple, in expectation of giving birth; pregnant.

    The expecting mother is enthusiastic about learning childcare.

    When is the new couple expecting?

  2. 2

    Expectant.

    Dunscomb was in the sanctum, while a single clerk and three or four clients, countryment of decent exterior and very expecting countenances, occupied the outer room .

    Parma, unwilling to fight an action which might force France into the field, raised the siege; and Alençon, having strengthened the garrison, thrown in supplies, saved his credit with the Low Countries, and at all events, compromised himself, fell back into his expecting attitude, waiting for Elizabeth to reward him .

    "Hello!?!" she said in a very expecting tone.

noun

  1. 1

    The process by which somebody expects something.

    In this process participants become immersed in the dynamic interplay of rememberings, communal extraction, imaginings, expectings, etc., and of singular perceptions of each of these separately and as they come together […]

Forms

plural
expectings
comparative
more expecting
superlative
most expecting
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).