altering

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of alter.

   The tailor is altering the jacket before the ceremony.

   Altering the agreement at this stage would delay everything.

   Note

   A form that does double duty as verb and gerund, and after need it turns passive in meaning. This skirt needs altering means the skirt needs to be altered, not that it will alter something. The tailoring sense of alter suits this construction well. The same spelling also serves as a countable noun for a change, so altering can head a phrase like the altering of the records.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   A change or modification made to something.

   The altering of the contract terms needed approval from both sides.

   Investigators uncovered the altering of the company's official records.

   Similarmodification, changing, amendment, revision

   Note

   Unlike most gerunds, this noun can be counted and pluralized. George Fox, in epistle LXXVI (1654), places the unchanging life of God before "changings and alterings were". Paired with changings, it names a run of changes rather than a single one. In current prose it typically takes the and of, as in the altering of the terms. Alteration is the near-synonym for one finished change.

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