1 [VN] ~ sb (in sth) to give sb support, courage or hope:
My parents have always encouraged me in my choice of career. * We were greatly encouraged by the positive response of the public.
2 to persuade sb to do sth by making it easier for them and making them believe it is a good thing to do:
[VNtoinf] Banks actively encourage people to borrow money. [also V-ing]
3 ~ sth (in sb/sth) to make sth more likely to happen or develop:
[VN] They claim that some computer games encourage violent behaviour in young children. * [VNtoinf] Music and lighting are used to encourage shoppers to buy more. [also V-ing]
OPPDISCOURAGE
encouraging adjective [notusuallybeforenoun]:
This month's unemployment figures are not very encouraging. * You could try being a little more encouraging!
encouragingly adverb:
to smile / nod encouragingly * The attendance was encouragingly high.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
Where does this definition of encourage come from?
This entry for encourage is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is encourage a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, encourage is tagged as verb.
Does encourage appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — encourage appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
