begetting

Pluralbegettings

1. 1
   verbliterary

   Present participle and gerund of beget.

   Each quick fix seemed to be begetting two new problems for the engineers.

   Begetting an heir became the duke's chief concern after his brother died.

   Note

   The final t doubles before the ending, as it does in getting and forgetting. The form keeps the verb's literary ring in both its jobs: a cause begetting its effects (one lie keeps begetting another) and a parent begetting a child, where it is especially the father's part. An obsolete meaning, getting hold of something, can still surface in old texts.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of fathering a child or bringing something into being, or the offspring or result so produced.

   The begetting of an heir was the first duty expected of the young king.

   The poem traces the begettings of the gods, each generation born of the one before.

   Similarprocreation, generation

   Note

   In the plural it names the chains of who fathered whom that fill genealogies, divine and human alike: John Peterman sets the gods' begettings in the Theogony beside the human begettings of the Old Testament. The singular names one act of fathering or making, as in the begetting of an heir.

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