advising

Pluraladvisings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of advise.

   The lawyer is advising her client to settle out of court.

   Advising small businesses on their taxes became her full-time job.

   Note

   The -ing form does two jobs. After be it builds the progressive (she is advising her client). On its own it names the activity as a noun (advising small businesses became her job). Either way it keeps the verb's object, so the person advised follows directly with no of. Do not confuse the gerund with the old noun meaning "advice", which could take a plural.

2. 2
   nounobsolete

   Guidance or counsel offered to help someone decide or act.

   Chloe had a particular fancy for calling poultry poetry,—an application of language in which she always persisted, notwithstanding frequent corrections and advisings from the young members of the family.

   1851, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

   Note

   This old noun is countable, unlike advice: it takes a plural, so each advising is a separate piece of counsel. Shakespeare uses it in Measure for Measure ("fasten your ear on my advisings"), and Harriet Beecher Stowe still pairs it with corrections in Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851–52). It is obsolete now, so in modern writing use advice or pieces of advice, and keep advising for the verb.

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