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say it: WITH-ur-ing
withering is an adjective and noun meaning "wreaking or capable of wreaking complete destruction". It is pronounced /ˈwɪðɚɪŋ/ — WITH-ur-ing. It carries 3 recorded senses.
wreaking or capable of wreaking complete destruction
“possessing annihilative power”
“a devastating hurricane”
“the guns opened a withering fire”
making light of
“afire with annihilating invective”
“a devastating portrait of human folly”
“to compliments inflated I've a withering reply”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for withering come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.