sporting

1. gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of sport

comparative more sporting · superlative most sporting

1. not comparablePertaining to sports

   He got a job in a sporting goods store.

2. comparableExhibiting sportsmanship.

   Quite sporting of you to call that foul on yourself.

3. comparableFair, generous; game.

   It was very sporting of her to let us off like that.

   1 more example

   All the fairy tales of my childhood were conjured up before my startled imagination, and appeared to be realised in the forms which surrounded me; I saw the whole forest filled with trolls, elves, and sporting dwarfs.

   1881, P. Chr. Asbjörnsen [i.e., Peter Christen Asbjørnsen], “A Summer Night in a Norwegian Forest”, in H. L. Brækstad, transl., Round the Yule Log. Norwegian Folk and Fairy Tales, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, →OCLC, page 281

4. not comparableobsoleteOf or relating to unseemly male excesses, especially gambling, prostitution, or similar recreational activities.

   New Yorkers coined the term “sporting culture” to identify the boisterous male culture then on display on the city's streets.

   2015, Michael Pierson, “Stephen Spaulding's Fourth of July in New Orleans”, in Slap, Andrew L., Towers, Frank, editors, Confederate Cities: The Urban South during the Civil War Era, University of Chicago Press, page 137

plural sportings

1. The act of taking part in a sport.

   […] the unprofitable plays, frivolous recreations, sportings, and gamings which are invented to pass away the precious time, and divert the mind from the witness of God […]

   c. 1675, Robert Barclay, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity