advancing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of advance.

   The crowd kept advancing toward the stage as the music grew louder.

   Advancing the meeting to Monday gave everyone less time to prepare.

   Note

   Every sense of the verb travels with this form, whether it takes an object or not: troops advancing on a town move themselves, while a lender advancing money or a planner advancing a meeting moves something else. Placed before a noun, it settles into an adjective, and its most familiar partners are age and years. In advancing years and advancing age, nothing is pushed forward except time itself.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of moving forward, or a single forward movement.

   The general timed the advancing of his troops to coincide with the dawn.

   Her rapid advancing through the company ranks surprised the older managers.

   Similarprogress, movement, progression

   Oppositeretreat, withdrawal

   Note

   Here the form has become a true noun, able to take a plural and an ordinary adjective. Henry Blunt, in 1839, writes of "our slow advancings," meaning moral progress rather than a march. That plural separates it from the verbal gerund, which takes an object instead: you speak of advancing the troops, not of the advancings of them. Its plainer equivalent is the noun advance.

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