acting

Temporarily assuming the duties or authority of another person when they are unable to do their job.

Adjective

  1. Temporarily assuming the duties or authority of another person when they are unable to do their job.
    • The Acting Minister must sign Executive Council documents in a Minister's absence.
    • The CEO is currently in a hospital. The CFO is acting CEO in the meantime.
    • Amy Gleason is the acting administrator of the US DOGE Service, the agency that houses the temporary Department of Government Efficiency, a White House official told CNN on Tuesday. - 2025 February 25, Kaitlan Collins...

Origin

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂eǵ- Proto-Indo-European *-eti Proto-Indo-European *h₂éǵeti Proto-Italic *agō Latin agō Latin ācta Old French actbor. Middle English acte English act English -ing English acting From act + -ing.

Related

cis-acting nonacting self-acting unacting pro tem

Noun

  1. An action or deed.
    • […] he does so much magnifie Nature and her Actings in all this material World, as he gives just cause of suspicion that he hath made her a kind of joynt Deess with God in the Affairs thereof; - 1685, Herbert Croft,...
    • […] I desire this Account may pass with them, rather for a Direction to themselves to act by, than a History of my actings, seeing it may not be of one farthing value to them to note what became of me. - 1722, Daniel...
    • Boyle’s theory explains the whole range of God’s actings in the world, those things that injure man as well as those which advantage him. - 1974, J. R. Jacob, “Robert Boyle and Subversive Religion in the Early...
  2. Something done by a party—so called to avoid confusion with the legal senses of deed and action.
  3. Pretending.
  4. The occupation of an actor.

Forms

actings

Derived

acting charades voice acting

Verb

  1. present participle and gerund of act
    • For quotations using this term, see Citations:acting.