begging

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of beg.

   The stranded hiker was begging for help along the roadside.

   Begging for one more chance, she wrote him a long apology.

   Note

   The verb form carries everything beg can mean, so the surrounding phrase decides the sense. Begging for help is pleading. A plan begging for a rewrite plainly lacks one. A remark begging for a punch provokes. Begging the question needs care: traditionally it means assuming what ought to be proved, while using it to mean "raising the question" is widely criticized.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The action of asking others for money, food, or other charity, especially in a public place.

   The city passed a law against begging in tourist areas.

   Years of begging had slowly worn down her pride.

   Similarpanhandling

   Note

   Two Middle English endings stand behind this one spelling. The noun comes from the gerund ending. The participle had a variant, beggand, alongside beggyng, but modern English keeps only the -ing shape for both. The noun can even be counted: Charles Coleman's The Mythologie of the Hindus (1832) complains of the Brahmans' "beggings for money," a plural that treats each appeal as a separate act.

3. 3
   noununcountableplural

   Money or goods acquired through the act of asking others for charity.

   She counted the morning's begging and found only a handful of coins.

   At dusk he pooled his begging with the others under the bridge.

   Similartakings

   Note

   Here the word stops naming an action and names a haul, and it usually takes the plural: beggings. An 1877 piece in All the Year Round sets it beside its respectable twin, "her earnings — or her beggings." That pairing shows how the word works, as the beggar's counterpart to wages. In the singular, the word normally means the act itself.

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