compounding

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of compound.

   The errors were compounding as deadlines slipped.

   Compounding the original mistake, he sent the wrong file again.

   Note

   Every use of the verb passes through this form: mixing ingredients, settling a claim for less than was owed, or interest growing on itself, as in the savings kept compounding, where it takes no object. Once it settles into a noun with its own plural, compoundings, it becomes the interest-growth noun or the pharmacist's craft. The participle itself takes objects and adverbs, and it never pluralizes.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   Growth that results when interest earns further interest, period after period.

   The power of compounding becomes obvious only over long investment horizons.

   Daily compounding produced a slightly higher return than the monthly option.

   Note

   A finance word with two grammars. As a mass noun it names the overall effect, interest snowballing on earlier interest. As a count noun, each compounding is one moment when interest is added to the balance, so a lender can quote the number of compoundings per year. Frequency words sit in front of it, as in daily, monthly or annual compounding, and more frequent compoundings mean a slightly larger return.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The preparation of a compound, such as a medicine, by mixing or combining substances.

   The compounding of the prescription required two different active ingredients.

   Modern pharmacies still offer compounding for patients who need custom doses.

   Similarpreparation, mixing, formulation, blending

   Note

   The craft of the dispensary, where ingredients are measured and mixed into a single preparation. Thackeray, writing between 1848 and 1850, ties it to a surgery in Bath, and pharmacists still use it for medicines made to order. It takes an of-phrase for what is made (the compounding of a prescription), or it stands alone as a service a pharmacy offers. Here a compound is a mixture, not interest on interest.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The reuse of steam in a steam engine or turbine, passing it through additional low-pressure cylinders to extract more work.

   Compounding improved the efficiency of marine steam engines in the nineteenth century.

   The ship's engine relied on compounding to squeeze more power from each boiler load.

   Note

   An engineer's term from the age of steam. Steam that has already worked once is passed on to do more work in additional low-pressure cylinders. Its rival was superheating: J. B. Snell, writing in Railway Magazine in 1954, says superheating stopped further development in compounding on New Zealand's railways. In this sense the word names a design approach, so it usually appears without an article.

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