What does comparing mean?
Comparing is the act of placing two or more things side by side in order to observe how they are alike and how they differ. It functions both as the ongoing form of the verb 'compare' — as in 'she was comparing the two candidates' answers' — and as a noun-like gerund naming the activity itself, as in 'a careful comparing of the evidence'. Comparison is fundamental to human reasoning: shoppers compare prices, scientists compare results, and readers compare versions of a text. The word carries no strong connotation of its own, though it frequently appears in contexts of judgement and evaluation, and in modern usage it often surfaces in discussions of self-esteem, where 'comparing yourself to others' is widely regarded as unhelpful. A related idiom, 'comparing apples to oranges', warns that some comparisons are fundamentally unfair because the items differ too greatly.
Present participle of 'compare': to examine two or more things in order to discover their similarities and differences, or to liken one thing to another.
"The students were busy comparing their answers after the exam."
Traditionally 'compare with' weighs two things against each other, while 'compare to' asserts similarity, but modern usage largely treats them interchangeably.
Gerund use: the action or process of examining things to determine their similarities and differences.
"Careful comparing of the receipts showed where the budget had gone wrong."
In most contexts the derived noun 'comparison' is preferred over the bare gerund 'comparing'; the gerund reading is grammatical but comparatively rare.
When you're 'comparing', you're literally reaching back to Latin par — 'equal' — the same root that gives us a 'pair': every comparison is really an attempt to see if two things can stand side by side.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of comparing
Comparing comes from the verb 'compare', which entered English via Old French 'comparer' from Latin 'comparare', meaning 'to pair together or match'. The Latin verb itself derives from 'com-' ('together') plus 'par' ('equal'), the same root behind English words such as 'pair', 'parity', and 'peer'. The word has carried its core sense of matching and weighing things against each other since its earliest use in Middle English, and its derivatives — 'comparison', 'comparative', 'comparable' — all preserve that original idea of bringing equals alongside one another.
Related word forms
How comparing is actually used
'Compare' traditionally takes 'with' when weighing two things against each other and 'to' when asserting likeness, though this distinction is widely relaxed in modern usage. The phrase 'comparing apples to oranges' signals a comparison between genuinely unlike things. In everyday speech, 'comparing' often carries a mildly cautionary tone in expressions like 'stop comparing yourself to others', since unfavourable self-comparison is a common source of anxiety.
Easily confused with comparing
'Compared' is the past tense or past participle form used for completed actions or in phrases like 'compared to', while 'comparing' describes the ongoing act of examination.