absorbing

UK/əbˈzɔː.bɪŋ/US/æbˈzɔɹ.bɪŋ/

adjectiveB2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,841 of 15,258leans written

Absorbing means so interesting that you lose track of time. An absorbing book, absorbing work, utterly absorbing.

It is about the effect on the reader rather than the subject, so an absorbing account of something dull is high praise for the writer. The literal sense, taking up liquid, is where the image comes from.

Definitions of absorbing

1adjectiveabsorbingSo interesting that you lose track of time.B2
“The documentary was so absorbing that I forgot to eat my dinner.”

absorbing is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin
absorbeō
Old French
assorbir
Middle French
absorber
English
absorb
English, today
absorbing

From absorb + -ing. absorb comes from Middle French absorber, from Old French assorbir, from Latin absorbeō. From Middle French absorber, from Old French assorbir, from Latin absorbeō (“swallow up”), from ab- + sorbeō, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European srebʰ- (“to sip”). Compare French absorber.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

absorbing in the wild

The resulting force is proportional to the velocity, but acts in the opposite direction, slowing the motion and absorbing energy.
Dashpot
In mathematics, an absorbing element (or annihilating element) is a special type of element of a set with respect to a binary operation on that set.
Absorbing element
The result of combining an absorbing element with any element of the set is the absorbing element itself.
Absorbing element
In both highly absorbing and highly scattering waters, visibility into the water is reduced.
Ocean turbidity

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the absorber family

absorb absorbed

absorbing — used about once every 7,462 pages · #10,841 · point at the bar for the others

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