Lessing

Part of speech: verb, noun, adjective

Definitions

1. Making something smaller or reducing its amount or degree in an archaic sense ; the surname of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, an eighteenth-century German dramatist and critic
2. Diminishing or decreasing something, as an old-fashioned verb form ; a proper name belonging to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the influential German playwright and critic of the Enlightenment
3. An archaic participle meaning reducing or cutting down ; the family name of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a German writer known for dramas and critical essays from the 1700s

Etymology: "Lessing" is simply the present participle and gerund of "less," used as a verb meaning to make smaller. The verb itself comes from "lessen," which was formed in Middle English from the determiner "less," so the ending is ordinary verb inflection rather than a separate root. The adjective "less" has a long Germanic pedigree. It descends from Old English "lǣs," meaning "smaller" or "less," which traces back to a Proto-Germanic form related to the same root as Old Frisian "lēs" and Old Saxon "lēs." Its ultimate ancestry reaches back to an Indo-European base that also gave the sense "to shrink" or "grow thin," so the idea of diminishing is built into the word from the start. Over time "less" split into several grammatical roles: an adverb, a determiner, a preposition, and eventually the verb and noun forms "lessen" and "lesse." The participle "lessing" therefore carries that old comparative idea of smallness into the act of reducing something.