bricking

Pluralbrickings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of brick.

   Workers are bricking over the old windows to seal the building.

   Bricking the device on purpose voids the warranty.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every meaning of the verb, from the bricklayer's to the technician's. Workers bricking up a doorway are building with bricks. In electronics slang, an update can be bricking phones, or a phone can simply be bricking. The verb runs both ways, transitive and intransitive, and in both cases the fault lies in software or configuration rather than in a blow.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of pelting someone or something with bricks.

   The mob's bricking of the storefront caused thousands in damage.

   A bricking from the rooftop crowd forced the soldiers back.

   Similarstoning, pelting

   Note

   The noun is countable as well as abstract, so each episode can be a bricking and repeated attacks become brickings. Edward Denmark's Not for Queen and Country (1998) speaks of the severity of the brickings that soldiers have to endure. In that usage the word names something suffered by a target rather than an act of building, which keeps it apart from the bricklaying verb form.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   A form of return fraud where someone buys a working electronic item, deliberately damages or strips it of valuable parts, then returns it to the seller for a refund as profit.

   Like gutting a watch for its parts, then returning the empty case for a full refund.

   Retailers have stepped up inspections to catch bricking before refunds are issued.

   The investigation uncovered a bricking scheme that drained the chain of thousands of dollars.

   Note

   A legal and retail term that takes its name from gadget slang, in which a dead device is a brick. Here the damage is deliberate and often physical, since valuable parts are stripped out. The scheme only works because the item is returned for a refund. It belongs with return fraud and usually appears beside words like scheme, refund and inspection.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3