What does executing mean?
"Executing" is the present participle and gerund of the verb "execute," meaning to carry out or put into effect a plan, order, task, or instruction. It is one of the workhorse verbs of professional and technical English: managers speak of executing strategy, athletes of executing plays, musicians of executing difficult passages, and programmers of executing code. In law, executing a document means signing it in the manner required to make it valid. A darker, older sense refers to putting a person to death by lawful sentence, a meaning that still appears in journalism though it is no longer the dominant use. The word connotes precision, competence, and follow-through — to say that someone executed a task well is to credit both the planning behind it and the skill of its performance. Derived from Latin roots meaning to follow out to the end, it remains indispensable wherever ideas must be turned into action.
verbThe present participle and gerund of "execute" — to carry out or put into effect a plan, order, or course of action; also, in legal and historical contexts, to perform formally (as with a document) or to put a person to death.
- Carrying out or putting into effect a plan, order, task, or duty.
- Performing a skillful movement or maneuver, as in sports, music, or dance.
- (Computing) Running a program, instruction, or piece of code.
- (Law) Signing or otherwise formalizing a document so that it becomes legally valid.
- (Historical/legal) Putting a person to death under a sentence of law.
"Executing the merger required months of careful coordination between the two legal teams."
"The pilot executed a flawless landing despite heavy crosswinds."
"The processor spends most of its time executing instructions fetched from memory."
From the Latin for 'to follow through to the end,' execute has followed a dark-to-digital arc: it once meant chiefly 'to put someone to death,' but today most people executing something are running computer code, not carrying out sentences.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of executing
"Executing" derives from the Latin verb "exsequi" (or "execut-"), formed from "ex-" (out) plus "sequi" (to follow), literally meaning to follow out or follow through to the end. The word entered English via Old French "executer" in the late Middle Ages, initially carrying strong senses of performing or enforcing, including the carrying-out of judicial sentences. Its root in "sequi" makes it a cousin of words such as "sequence," "consecutive," "prosecute," and "persecute." The computing sense of executing instructions emerged in the twentieth century with the development of programmable machines.
Related word forms
How executing is actually used
"Executing" is neutral to formal in register and common in professional, legal, military, sporting, and technical writing. In computing contexts it is standard and unmarked. The sense relating to capital punishment is now largely confined to formal and historical use, though it remains current in journalism.
Easily confused with executing
"Exacting" means demanding great care or precision, while "executing" means carrying something out.