caging

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of cage.

   Volunteers are caging the rescued hawks until their wings heal.

   Critics argued that the label's strict rules were caging the band's creativity.

   Note

   The silent e of cage drops before -ing. Beyond literal confinement, the form carries the verb's slang sense of jailing someone, the figurative hemming in of a person's creativity, and a direct-mail sense: tracking responses to maintain mailing lists, or to flag voters who no longer live at their registered address.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of putting something into a cage or trapping it inside one.

   The farm ended the caging of its laying hens after shoppers complained.

   Engineers recommended the caging of the loose rock face with steel mesh to stop rockfalls.

   Similarconfinement

   Note

   The noun also names what the act leaves behind: the mesh itself. A 2021 issue of RAIL reports mesh-and-bolt caging going in along a three-mile stretch of cliff near Newport to stop rock falls. In that use it is a mass noun for the material, like fencing or netting, while the act usually takes the and of: the caging of laying hens.

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