appearing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of appear.

   Cracks were appearing in the old plaster ceiling after the earthquake.

   He grew comfortable appearing before large live audiences.

   Note

   One -ing spelling does two jobs. As a participle it builds progressive tenses (cracks were appearing), and as a gerund it names the activity (appearing before an audience). It carries every use of appear, including the courtroom one, as in appearing before a judge. It also carries the linking use, which takes an adjective, not an adverb: appearing calm, not appearing calmly. With a plural, appearings, it has become the noun for coming into view.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of coming into view; an instance of becoming visible.

   The unexpected appearing of a figure in the doorway froze the whole room.

   Sailors welcomed the appearing of land on the horizon after weeks at sea.

   Similarappearance, emergence

   Oppositedisappearance

   Note

   A noun that keeps the motion of the verb in it, and one that can be counted. Caleb Webb, in his Discourses on 'the Lord's prayer' (1866), writes of "sudden and extensive disappearings and fresh appearings." Setting the plural against its opposite makes each arrival a separate event, things coming and going without warning, rather than a single steady state.

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