beaching

Pluralbeachings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of beach.

   The captain avoided beaching the vessel by steering into deeper water.

   Strong currents kept beaching driftwood along the entire coastline.

   Note

   The -ing form does two grammatical jobs. As a participle it builds progressive tenses (the tide was beaching the boat), and as a gerund it acts as a noun (beaching a dinghy takes care). Because beach can take an object or stand alone, a crew can be beaching a vessel, or the vessel can be beaching on sand. Drivers use it too, for a vehicle grounded on its underside with its wheels spinning.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   An event in which a marine animal strands itself on a shore.

   Marine biologists arrived within hours of the beaching to assess the animal's condition.

   A mass beaching of pilot whales left dozens stranded along the coast.

   Similarstranding

   Note

   A countable noun that readily takes a plural, so scientists and reporters treat each stranding as a separate incident. David Malakoff, writing in Science in 2001, counted Cuvier's beaked whales "before the beachings." Whales are the familiar case, but sharks qualify too, such as thresher sharks that mainly rove deep waters. The noun keeps its tie to the -ing form of beach, but here it names the event, not the action.

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