coughing

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of cough.

   Coughing spread through the lecture hall within minutes of the heater turning on.

   He couldn't stop coughing after breathing in the smoke.

   Note

   One spelling, two verb jobs. As a progressive it follows a form of be (she was coughing all night), and as a gerund it fills a noun slot (coughing spread through the hall). The countable noun, with its plural coughings, shares the same spelling. Followed by up, the verb becomes transitive and often figurative: coughing up blood, coughing up a confession, or, in slang, coughing up the money someone owes.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The act of forcing air out of the lungs with a sudden, harsh sound.

   A sudden fit of coughing interrupted his speech halfway through.

   Loud coughing from the back row distracted the performers.

   Note

   Unlike the gerund, the noun can be counted, and its plural coughings tends to travel in company. Anna Mary Howitt's audience in 1855 answers with "titterings and coughings", and John O'Loughlin in 2011 piles up "coughings and shufflings… snivellings and sneezings." The plural suits a room's scattered noises. For a single bout, a fit of coughing or simply a cough reads more naturally.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   A repeated sound made by a bird or other animal that resembles a person coughing.

   The deer's coughing echoed across the valley at dusk.

   A harsh coughing rose from the parrot's cage all afternoon.

   Note

   The human sound is lent to animals here. In The Return of Tarzan (1913), Edgar Rice Burroughs has his hero hear "the distant coughing of Sheeta" among the mountains' night sounds and recognize it at once. The usual frame is the coughing of plus the animal. The word names the call by its likeness to a person's cough, not by any illness in the creature.

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