beavering

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of beaver.

   He kept beavering away at the manuscript long after midnight.

   The volunteers were beavering through stacks of paperwork.

   Note

   Several distinct verbs stand behind this one form. The everyday one means to work hard and usually takes away: beavering away at a report. Backgammon players use it for redoubling at once after being doubled, which keeps the doubling cube on their own side. In slang it means cutting a continuous ring around a tree being felled. Any of them can serve as a participle or as a verbal noun.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The activity of hunting or trapping beavers.

   Beavering supported a thriving fur trade across the colonial frontier.

   Years of intensive beavering nearly wiped out the local populations.

   Note

   A trapper's word built directly on the animal, beaver plus -ing, much as fishing is built on fish. Cooper's The Deerslayer (1841) has a character who does "a little beavering for myself as occasions offer," and the phrasing shows it behaving like any uncountable activity noun: a little beavering, some beavering. It shares its spelling with the hard-working verb form, so beavering away means labor, not trapping.

Showing meanings only. Show all 2