Jagende

Jagende is a present participle and adjective used in several Germanic languages, notably Dutch and the Scandinavian languages Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish. It comes from the verb meaning “to hunt” and is employed to describe someone or something that is engaged in hunting or pursuing a target. As an adjective, jagende can modify nouns or appear predicatively in sentences.

Etymology and cognates vary by language but share the same root meaning of pursuing or chasing prey. In Dutch the form is jagende; in Norwegian and Swedish the equivalent forms are jagende and jagande, respectively, with parallel usage in Danish. The construction is common in both descriptive wildlife language and broader figurative speech.

Usage and meaning: Jagende functions as an attributive or predicative descriptor meaning “hunting” or “in pursuit.” It is used for animals actively chasing prey, for people who hunt, and, in a figurative sense, for individuals who are aggressively pursuing goals or opportunities. The form agrees with the noun in gender and number in languages that inflect adjectives, yielding variants such as jagende hond or den jagande hunden in different contexts.

Examples (illustrative, one per language): Dutch: de jagende hond (the hunting dog). Norwegian: den jagende ulven (the hunting wolf). Swedish: den jagande hunden (the hunting dog). Danish: den jagende hund (the hunting dog).

See also: related verbs and nouns for hunting in each language, such as jag/jagen, jakt, jæger, and their English equivalents.