crocodiling

1. 1
   verbslang

   Present participle and gerund of crocodile.

   Crocodiling along the corridor, the class kept perfectly in pairs.

   The whole school went crocodiling down the lane toward the cathedral.

   Note

   Behind this form stands a piece of Esperantist slang: to crocodile is to slip into some other language at an Esperanto-language gathering. The verb is intransitive, so delegates are caught crocodiling over dinner, never crocodiling a language. The gerund shares its spelling with the paint-cracking noun but not its meaning. Schoolchildren walking in file draw instead on the noun crocodile, a long procession of people walking together.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The formation of a network of cracks across the surface of dried paint or varnish.

   Like the cracked, scaly skin of a crocodile, which is where the name comes from.

   Restorers noted extensive crocodiling on the painting's old varnish layer.

   Crocodiling had spread across the entire hood of the antique car.

   Similarcrazing, alligatoring, cracking, craquelure

   Note

   A picture taken from the reptile's hide: the cracks break a dried coat into small plates, much like a crocodile's scales. As a mass noun it takes no plural and no indefinite article. A surface shows extensive or widespread crocodiling, never a crocodiling, and a writer who wants to count the damage counts the cracks instead.

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