consulting

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of consult.

   The committee spent weeks consulting experts before reaching a decision.

   Consulting the original records, the historian uncovered several errors.

   Note

   One spelling, two grammatical jobs: as a participle it carries the progressive (she is consulting the archive), and as a gerund it acts like a noun (consulting the team takes time). The verb's transitivity rides along. With a direct object it means asking someone or looking something up; without one it can mean working as an outside adviser, as in she is consulting for a bank.

2. 2
   nounabbreviationellipsis

   Ellipsis of consulting physician. Rare in current English.

   Note

   Hospital shorthand that drops the noun and keeps the adjective, the same clipping that turned attending physicians into attendings. William G. Rothstein's American Medical Schools and the Practice of Medicine (1987) sets the pair side by side: attendings attend; consultings consult. It counts like any noun, with the plural consultings, and belongs to medical talk. An article usually tells it apart from the -ing form of consult: a consulting is a doctor.

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