clubbing

Pluralclubbings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The activity of going out to nightclubs, typically to dance, drink, and socialize late into the night.

   Clubbing lost its appeal for him once the late nights began wrecking his work schedule.

   The city's clubbing scene draws tourists from across the region.

   Similarpartying

   Note

   Its natural home is after the verb go: we're going clubbing tonight. This is the same pattern as go dancing or go shopping. It also stands alone as an activity noun (I don't like clubbing) and modifies other nouns (the clubbing scene). Behind it sits the verb meaning to go to nightclubs, and the noun rarely takes an article or a plural.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of club.

   Witnesses described the attackers clubbing the man until bystanders stepped in.

   She spent her twenties clubbing in Miami every weekend.

   Note

   The -ing form spreads across very different verbs. With an object it is forceful: clubbing a man, or clubbing a rival by a wide margin. Without one it is sociable: families clubbing together to rent a cabin, friends clubbing to share a common expense, or a night out spent clubbing, which leads into the nightlife noun. An object usually signals the blow; together signals the pooling.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   An act of striking someone or something with a club or other heavy implement.

   The witness reported a savage clubbing outside the tavern.

   Several clubbings were recorded during the night of rioting.

   Similarbeating, bludgeoning, battering

   Note

   Unlike the nightlife sense, this one counts: a clubbing, several clubbings. The plural turns up in grim lists of violence, alongside shootings and jailings. Kevin Baker's "Blood on the Street" in The New York Times (2009) describes efforts to unionize being met with clubbings, blacklistings and executions. Each clubbing is a single episode of violence.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A thickening and broadening of the ends of the fingers and toes, producing a rounded, bulbous tip.

   The physician documented clubbing during the respiratory exam.

   Finger clubbing prompted further testing for an underlying condition.

   Note

   A clinician's word for a physical sign rather than a disease in its own right. Doctors record it on examination and read it as a clue, often to long-standing low blood oxygen from heart, lung or gut disease. The name is pictorial: the fingertips swell into the shape of a club. It usually appears with its site named, as finger clubbing, and it names something observed, not something done.

5. 5
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The development of clubroot in a plant, in which the roots become swollen and distorted.

   Heavy clubbing in the field forced the grower to rotate his crops.

   Wet, acidic soils encourage clubbing in cabbages and other brassicas.

   Similarclubroot

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