aligning

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of align.

   Aligning the satellite dish took longer than the whole installation.

   The crew is aligning the wheels before the race begins.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. In "the crew is aligning the wheels" it is the verb in progress; in "aligning the dish took hours" it is a gerund naming the task. It carries every use of align, from things aligning on their own to the reflexive political sense, aligning oneself with an ally, where with is the preposition to reach for. The past and past participle are aligned.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act or result of bringing things into correct position relative to one another; an alignment.

   The aligning of the two beams required millimeter precision.

   Engineers checked the aligning of the rails before the train passed.

   Similarpositioning

   Note

   A true noun, not just the verb at work: it takes a plural, alignings, which the gerund never does. It means much the same as alignment and usually appears framed by the and of, as in the aligning of the rails. That frame keeps it close to the activity itself.

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