clarifying

Pluralclarifyings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of clarify.

   The spokesperson spent the morning clarifying the company's new policy.

   Clarifying the contract terms took longer than the lawyers expected.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every meaning of clarify, and the oldest is physical: freeing a liquid of cloudiness. That use works both ways. The brewer is clarifying the beer, or the beer is clarifying as it settles. The 'explaining' sense grew from it, while a long-obsolete meaning, 'glorifying', has dropped away. Placed before a noun, as in a clarifying footnote, the form has become the adjective.

2. 2
   adjective

   Serving to make something clearer and easier to grasp; providing clarity.

   The editor added a clarifying footnote to explain the obscure reference.

   A few clarifying sentences at the start would help readers follow the argument.

   Similarexplanatory, illuminating, enlightening

   Oppositeconfusing

   Note

   Its grading marks it as a true adjective: one account can be more clarifying than another, and the most clarifying remark settles a question. It sits comfortably before a noun, as in clarifying information, and just as easily after a verb. Erin Keane, writing in 2018, found a book 'insightful and clarifying', pairing it with another word of praise for what a book does to the reader's understanding.

3. 3
   adjective

   Serving to remove impurities or suspended particulates, leaving a liquid or surface clean and clear.

   The brewer added a clarifying agent to settle the yeast out of the beer.

   A clarifying filter pulled the fine sediment from the cider.

   Similarcleansing

   Note

   Here the word keeps the literal clearing that the verb began with. On a shampoo bottle, clarifying means the product strips impurities from the hair. In brewing and cider-making, the same word names agents and filters that settle out sediment. Context almost always separates it from the 'explaining' adjective: a clarifying shampoo cleans hair, but it makes nothing easier to understand.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   An act or instance of making something clear; a clarification.

   The memo offered a useful clarifying of the new procedure.

   A brief clarifying from management resolved the dispute over hours.

   Similarexplanation, elucidation

   Note

   Unlike the gerund, this noun can be counted. It takes an article and a plural, clarifyings. John de Boer's The Theory of Knowledge of the Cambridge Platonists (1931) sets it beside strainings and refinings to describe how Culverwel's mind is prepared for insight. That company shows that even the mental sense still carries the image of a liquid being cleared.

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