blanking

Pluralblankings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of blank.

   The editor is blanking sensitive names from the public files.

   Blanking the screen during the break saved battery life.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty: a progressive verb after be, and a gerund naming the act itself. Its most idiomatic home is the memory lapse. That use favors the first person and the progressive, and it usually takes on: I'm blanking on her name. Elsewhere it can mean erasing, keeping a side from scoring, or, in slang, pointedly ignoring someone.

   Sorry, I'm blanking on your name.

   She was blanking on the date of the meeting until someone reminded her.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   An act or instance of something being erased, hidden, or covered so that it no longer appears.

   The blanking of the witness's name protected their identity in the transcript.

   A glitch caused the momentary blanking of every display in the control room.

   Similarerasure, redaction, deletion, blackout

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The dimming of a scanning beam's brightness to zero while it moves into position, so that no image is drawn during the move.

   The blanking suppresses the beam as it sweeps back across the screen.

   Television engineers measured the blanking interval between successive frames.

   Note

   A scanning beam has to go dark while it retraces to begin the next horizontal or vertical scan; otherwise stray lines would show on the picture. Engineers treat each dark spell as usable time. A. M. Dhake's TV and Video Engineering (2001) has charges read into a horizontal register "during each blanking." So the noun counts naturally, one blanking per retrace, and it often pairs with interval.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   A metalworking process that cuts or stamps a flat sheet of metal into the rough shape of a part.

   Blanking produces the initial outline before the piece is bent and welded.

   The blanking press stamps out hundreds of metal forms each hour.

   Note

   On the shop floor this is the first cut in sheet-metal work. A punch and die shear a flat piece from the sheet in a single stroke. What comes out is only a rough outline, and bending, forming and finishing follow later. The word often works as a modifier for the equipment, as in a blanking press or a blanking die.

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