aiming

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of aim.

   The hunter was aiming carefully before pulling the trigger.

   Aiming for the highest grade in the class, she studied every night.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. After be it makes the progressive (she was aiming), and on its own it works as a verbal noun that can still take an object (aiming a rifle takes practice). It keeps the verb's constructions: aiming at a target, or aiming followed by an infinitive (aiming to finish early). Unlike the countable noun, it never takes a plural.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of pointing or directing something toward a target.

   Her careful aiming made the difference between a miss and a perfect score.

   The instructor praised the recruit's aiming during the rifle drill.

   Similarmarksmanship

   Note

   A true noun, with a plural the verb form cannot have: aimings. In the plural it drifts from marksmanship toward ambition. William Hickman Smith Aubrey's The National and Domestic History of England (1867) writes of "the aimings after the impossible", meaning a policy's goals rather than anyone's eye along a barrel. There it takes after, not at, which gives the phrase a sense of reaching rather than pointing.

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