concealing

Pluralconcealings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of conceal.

   The fog was concealing the rocks along the shoreline.

   Concealing the truth from investors led to a major lawsuit.

   Note

   The verb's -ing form does two jobs. After be, it builds the progressive (the fog was concealing the rocks). At the head of a clause, it acts as a gerund that still governs an object (concealing the truth led to a lawsuit). Either way it keeps the verb's transitive habit: something is always being concealed, and it is named directly after the verb.

2. 2
   noun

   Gerund of conceal.

   The deliberate concealing of evidence obstructed the trial.

   The concealing of his identity kept him safe for years.

   Note

   A noun built from the verb, and it behaves like one. It takes an article and an of-phrase, as in the concealing of evidence. Its verbal twin, the participle and verbal gerund, takes a direct object instead: concealing the truth, with no article and no of. Because it is a full noun, it can even be plural, concealings. Concealment names the same act.

3. 3
   noun

   Material or anything similar that conceals something, keeping it hidden from view.

   Similarcovering, cover

   Note

   Here the action has hardened into a thing: whatever does the hiding. Herman Melville's Pierre (1852) uses it in the plural for clouds that wrap a view: "those concealings slid aside." The plural suits this sense, because it counts coverings rather than naming an act. Unlike the act of hiding, it names something you could point to, such as clouds or any material that screens a view.

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