caveating

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of caveat.

   The authors were careful, caveating each forecast with the limits of their data.

   The neighbor is caveating the title to the land, claiming a right of way across it.

   Note

   One -ing form serves both as participle (the lawyers are caveating the sale) and as gerund (caveating every claim wears readers out). The verb is the noun caveat put to work unchanged, and its final t is not doubled before the ending. In everyday prose it means hedging a statement; in property law it can mean lodging a formal claim on a piece of land.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   In fencing, the movement of shifting one's sword from one side of an opponent's sword to the other.

   Without skillful caveating, a fencer has few ways to get past a well-held blade.

   His caveating was so fast that his opponent never saw the attack switch sides.

   Note

   A fencer's word for the small motion that carries a blade across to the other side of an opponent's, so that an attack can reach the line the opponent is not guarding. Abraham Rees's The Cyclopaedia, from before 1820, calls it so necessary that without it there could scarcely be any offensive play or pursuit. It is uncountable: a fencer practices caveating, never a caveating. It has nothing to do with the verb caveat.

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