canning

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The preserving of food by heat processing it inside a sealed jar or can.

   Canning extends the life of garden produce far past the growing season.

   He took up canning so the orchard's peaches would last through the year.

   Similarpreserving, bottling

   Note

   The noun works two ways: as a mass noun for the whole craft, and as a count noun for particular batches or kinds of packed food. Herbert John Miller's Non-ferrous Metals Industry (1969) uses both at once. Aluminum can stand in for tin in most dry cannings, he notes, but not for the canning of acid fruits. Use the plural only when you mean separate runs or product types.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of can.

   The factory is canning peaches around the clock during harvest.

   They spent the afternoon canning tomatoes from their garden.

   Note

   The everyday -ing form, doing two jobs. In the factory is canning peaches it builds the progressive. In they spent the afternoon canning tomatoes it names the activity. Used bare as a gerund, it shades into the noun for food preservation. Only the noun takes a plural, cannings, which the verb form never does.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The practice of gathering aluminum cans and other recyclables, then selling them to earn money.

   He makes a bit of extra cash from canning along the boardwalk each summer.

   Canning has become a daily routine for some who collect bottles from city parks.

   Note

   A livelihood rather than a kitchen craft. The people who do it are called canners, and for them canning is a way of earning, often an independent one. "You're your own boss," Eugene Gadsden says of it. Julia Carrie Wong, writing in The Guardian in 2016, ties it to Californians who depend on income from recycling centers. Context nearly always separates it from the food-preserving sense.

Showing meanings only. Show all 4