Aiming

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ˈeɪ.mɪŋ/

Definitions

1. The action of focusing one's efforts towards a particular goal or target
2. The act of pointing or aligning a device or weapon toward a specific point for accuracy
3. The process of adjusting the direction of something to hit or reach a particular goal

Etymology: Aiming is the present participle of "aim", and the verb began as a word for estimating rather than shooting. Its Middle English ancestor, "aimen" or "eimen", meant "to guess at, to estimate", and it came from the Anglo-Norman or Old French "aesmer", which was built on Latin "aestimare", "to estimate" or "to value". The idea of a valuation or judgment gradually narrowed into the sense of judging a distance or direction, and only later into taking deliberate aim at a target. The noun "aim" traces to the same Old French family, from "esme", a word meaning estimate or judgment. So the act of lining up a rifle or a telescope carries a trace of an older sense of weighing and assessing a situation before committing to it.

Synonyms: targeting, directing, intending, planning, striving

Antonyms: neglecting, ignoring, disregarding, abandoning, overlooking