bailing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of bail.

   The crew spent the night bailing water from the flooded hold.

   Bailing out at the last minute cost him the deposit.

   Note

   One -ing form serves every use of bail, from the courtroom to the leaking boat. In the scooping sense the object can be either the water or the vessel. You can be bailing water, bailing the dinghy, or simply bailing with no object at all. The same form also names securing someone's release, so only context tells the listener which bail is meant.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act or process of bailing something, such as scooping water from a vessel to keep it afloat.

   Steady bailing kept the dinghy afloat until rescue arrived.

   The crew's frantic bailing barely matched the rate of the leak.

   Similarscooping

   Note

   A noun that can be counted as well as massed: each round of scooping is one bailing, and the plural bailings follows naturally. In Ernest Thompson Seton's Two Little Savages (1903), a well is emptied and left to refill, and after three bailings the water comes in clean. Uncounted, as in steady bailing, the word names the ongoing work. Counted, it names separate rounds of it.

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