battling

Pluralbattlings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of battle.

   Rescue crews spent days battling the rising floodwaters.

   He kept battling his rivals for the top spot all season.

   Note

   The -ing form behind progressive tenses and participle phrases: crews were battling, a team battling for the title. It can take a direct object (battling the floodwaters) or stand alone (armies battling through the night). Keep it apart from a dialect verb battle of Northern England and Scotland, meaning 'to feed' or 'to make fertile', which shares the spelling and lies behind the old word for fattening.

2. 2
   adjective

   Actively engaged in fighting or combat.

   The battling armies clashed repeatedly along the river.

   Reporters described the candidates as battling rivals locked in a dead heat.

   Similarwarring, fighting

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Engagement in combat or fighting; the act of struggling.

   Decades of political battling produced little real change.

   Her recovery demanded constant battling against her own doubts.

   Similarfighting, struggle, wrangling, combat, conflict

   Note

   Unlike the farming noun, this one comes from Middle English bataillinge, battle plus -ing. It works as a mass noun for ongoing struggle (decades of political battling). It also works as a count noun, with the plural battlings, for separate bouts of fighting. The mass use suits long, wearing conflict, and the count use suits episodes that can be listed one by one.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   Anything that nourishes or fattens, such as food for people, feed for livestock, or manure that enriches soil.

   Cottagers prized any battling that would fatten their few animals before market.

   The thin soil yielded little until generations of battling enriched it.

   Similarfeed, fodder, nourishment

5. 5
   noununcountable

   The process by which something becomes fat, or the deliberate fattening of it.

   The battling of cattle for market was a careful, season-long task.

   Farmers judged the battling of their stock by feel as much as by eye.

   Similarfattening

   Note

   Despite the spelling, nothing here is about war. This battling comes from an older verb battle meaning "to nourish, feed," a different word from the one for fighting. A farmer's battling of cattle is the fattening of them for market. Context has to carry the meaning. Beside stock, pasture or market it reads as feeding, but anywhere else most readers will hear combat.

6. 6
   adjective

   Nourishing; tending to fatten.

   The battling grasses of the valley were famous for fattening livestock.

   Travelers spoke of the battling fare served at the old farmhouse.

   Similarnourishing, fattening, nutritious, hearty

   Note

   The adjective puts the old feeding verb to work on pasture and fodder. Sir John Scott Keltie's The works of the British dramatists (1873) gives the line "Whose battling pastures fatten all my flocks," where the very next verb spells out what battling means. Pairing it with fatten, feed or flocks keeps it from being heard as fighting. The word's origin is told under the "fattening" noun.

7. 7
   adjective

   Able to produce plentiful growth, as rich, well-nourished ground does.

   The battling soil along the river grew wheat so thick that a horse could barely push through it.

   Few stretches of ground were as battling as the well-watered meadow.

   Similarfertile, rich, fruitful, productive

   Oppositebarren, infertile, poor

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