charting

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The act of mapping out or recording something on a chart, graph, or map.

   The charting of the coastline required months of careful surveying.

   Daily charting of blood pressure revealed a slow upward trend.

   Similarmapping, recording, plotting, tracking

   Note

   Unlike the verb form, the noun can be counted: its plural is chartings, and in the plural it often traces something abstract. Michael D. Bristol's Big-Time Shakespeare (2005) speaks of chartings of an artist's psychological development. Shildrick and Price set a dentist's probings and chartings beside mirrors and X-rays. The plural belongs to scholarly prose. For a single act of mapping, the charting of something is the usual shape.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of chart.

   Researchers are charting the spread of the disease across the region.

   He spent the evening charting his progress on a large graph.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. It builds progressive verbs (researchers are charting the spread), and it also stands as a gerund, a verb used as a noun (charting a route takes patience). Most of its uses are transitive: mapping a coast, plotting a plan, entering readings into a patient's record. Music gives it an intransitive life, though. A song can simply be charting, climbing a hit chart with no object at all.

Showing meanings only. Show all 2