ennobling

English

Adjective

ennobling (comparative more ennobling, superlative most ennobling)

1. Acting or tending to ennoble.
   • 1755, P. Shaw, Man, a paper for ennobling the species:

     Some of the learned, devoting themselves entirely to criticism, chronology, or philology, remain absolute strangers to the more ennobling sciences.

   • 2010, C. Stephen Jaeger, Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility, page 140:

     He checks criticism by multiplying the cause for embarrassment and taking it on himself; and this brings the act into the structure of an ennobling chivalric deed.

   • 2012, Jerome Klapka, ‎Carolyn Oulton, Weeds, page 53:

     It is not a very ennobling voice, the voice of Worldly Prudence; but it is, perhaps, none the less practically influential on that account.

Derived terms

• ennoblingly
• unennobling

 

Verb

ennobling

1. present participle and gerund of ennoble

Noun

ennobling (plural ennoblings)

1. An act of making noble.
   • 1849, William Jay, Sermons:

     They may think to improve the Scripture; but by their ennoblings they debase it, by their enrichings they impoverish it, by their enlargings they contract it.