chambering

Pluralchamberings

1. 1
   nouncountable

   The chamber of a firearm: the part that holds a cartridge or shell ready to be fired.

   Inspectors check the chambering for fouling before certifying the rifle as safe.

   A misaligned chambering will jam the weapon after the first shot.

   Note

   A word for the chamber that keeps the sense of the work that shaped it. The verb form also means making a gun to fit a particular caliber, so the noun tends to name the chamber as something cut and fitted. It is countable, with the plural chamberings, so you can compare the chamberings of two rifles.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of chamber.

   The soldier was chambering the next round as he advanced.

   Chambering the cartridge smoothly takes practice.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every sense of the verb chamber, and most of them belong to weapons. Chambering a round loads it, while chambering a gun means making it for a particular caliber. Martial artists use it for drawing back a fist or leg before a strike. As a gerund it names the act itself, as in chambering takes practice. The old lascivious meaning lives on in the obsolete word for lewdness.

3. 3
   verbobsolete

   Sexual misconduct or immorality, especially of a lewd or promiscuous kind.

   The diarist confessed that his youth had been wasted in revelry and chambering.

   Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.

   1611, The Holy Bible, King James Version

   Note

   Its best-known setting is the King James Bible of 1611, which pairs it with wantonness after rioting and drunkenness. The obsolete verb chamber once meant "to be lascivious," and this noun names that conduct. Today it reads only as a biblical echo. Use it knowingly, for archaic or mock-solemn effect, and never as a neutral word for sexual behavior.

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