claiming

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of claim.

   The injured workers are claiming compensation from their employer.

   Claiming the abandoned land turned out to be harder than expected.

   Note

   Every meaning of claim passes into this form: asserting something without proof, demanding land, ownership or damages, even causing a loss, as when a disaster is claiming lives. After be it builds the progressive (they are claiming you are wrong). As a gerund it fills a noun slot but keeps its direct object (claiming the land). That is how to tell it from the true noun, where of introduces what is claimed.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of stating that something is true or that one has a right to something.

   The claiming of unemployment benefits requires proof of recent employment.

   His repeated claiming of credit for the team's work caused resentment.

   Note

   A full noun, able to go plural. Thomas Carlyle, in his History of Friedrich II. of Prussia (1858), writes of an "inextricable coil of claimings, quarrellings and agreeings." The plural turns single acts into a tangle of rival demands, and the pile of -ing nouns gives the phrase its weary rhythm. In plainer prose, where claimings would sound heavy, the noun claim usually does the same work.

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