combining

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of combine.

   Floodwaters are combining with runoff to overwhelm the city drains.

   Combining their savings, the young couple finally bought a house.

   Note

   The -ing form does two jobs. After be it builds the progressive (are combining), and on its own it heads a phrase as a gerund. The silent e of combine drops before the suffix. Both sides of the verb carry over: intransitive in combining with runoff, transitive in combining their savings. As a gerund it takes a direct object, which sets it apart from the noun for the act, where of is needed.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act by which separate things are joined or brought together into a single whole.

   Like several streams merging into one wide river.

   The combining of the two firms created the region's largest bank.

   Much of the album's charm comes from the combining of jazz and folk.

   Similarmerger, union, fusion, blending, amalgamation

   Oppositeseparation

   Note

   Unlike the gerund, this noun can be counted, and the plural combinings names separate acts of joining. Dickens, writing in 1840–41, mocks "these little combinings together, of friends" for laudable ends "which the law terms conspiracies." The line shows that together often follows the noun. It also shows that the word can take a wry edge when the things being joined are people.

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