adding

Pluraladdings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of add.

   The accountant is adding the final figures before lunch.

   Adding salt slowly, she tasted the soup as she went.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs here. With a form of be it builds the progressive (she is adding the figures); without one it can open a clause or act as a noun (Adding salt slowly…). It often trails a sentence to tack on a further remark, as in he left, adding that he would return, and it pairs with up when the sense is totting a sum. Unlike the countable noun, it takes no plural.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   An act of addition; an instance of combining quantities into a total.

   The adding of several new clauses lengthened the whole contract.

   A final adding of the quarterly figures confirmed the profit.

   Similaraddition, tally

   Note

   Here adding becomes a countable noun that takes a plural. Brent Davis's Teaching Mathematics: Toward a Sound Alternative (2013) speaks of doing "the addings and subtractings," the routine operations of arithmetic counted out one at a time. The plural sits most naturally beside its partner subtractings, and it carries a plain, classroom flavor that the more formal addition lacks.

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