confirming

Pluralconfirmings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of confirm.

   The bank is confirming the transaction before releasing the funds.

   Confirming the witness's account proved difficult after so many years.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every sense of confirm with it: strengthening someone's resolve, administering the sacrament of confirmation, checking that a statement is accurate, approving a nomination. After a form of be it builds the progressive (the committee is confirming the nominee). Standing alone it works as a gerund that still takes a direct object, as in confirming the figures took hours.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of making something definite, certain, or officially valid, or a single instance of doing so.

   The formal confirming of the treaty took place at dawn before the assembled delegates.

   A second confirming of the figures was required before the report could be published.

   Similarconfirmation, ratification, verification, validation

   Note

   Here the -ing word has become a true noun, and its grammar shows it. It takes an article and adjectives (the formal confirming), and it has a plural, confirmings. Its object arrives through of, as in the confirming of the treaty. The gerund would take that object directly instead: confirming the treaty.

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