crushing

1. 1
   adjective

   Having enough force to overpower, defeat, or overwhelm whatever it presses against.

   The team suffered a crushing defeat in the championship final.

   Rising rents placed a crushing burden on small shop owners.

   Similaroverwhelming, heavy, decisive, oppressive, resounding

   Note

   Literal and figurative force share one adjective here. Crushing injuries are what a body suffers when caught under real weight, while a crushing defeat or a crushing burden borrows that weight to express scale. To tell it from the disheartening meaning, ask where the force lands. Here it overpowers a body, a team or a business; there it lands on someone's spirit.

2. 2
   adjective

   Causing deep disappointment or loss of hope; emotionally devastating.

   The rejection letter dealt a crushing blow to her confidence.

   His sudden resignation was crushing for the entire department.

   Similardevastating, shattering, heartbreaking, demoralizing

   Oppositeencouraging, heartening, uplifting

   Note

   The weight is emotional now, and the word sits comfortably after be as a spoken reaction to bad news: "Your dog has leukemia? That's crushing." Before a noun it pairs with feelings that press down from within, such as crushing guilt, and with blow, as in a crushing blow to someone's confidence.

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle of crush.

   The new machine is crushing tons of ore every hour.

   They are crushing ripe grapes to make wine.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. After be it builds the progressive (they are crushing grapes), and on its own it can head a gerund phrase (crushing grapes is slow work). The verb's colloquial sense of doing impressively well carries over, so someone can be crushing an interview or a performance. Before a noun, the same spelling usually becomes the adjective of overwhelming force.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The act or process of pressing something with enough force to break or deform it.

   The crushing of the ore releases tiny particles of metal.

   Factory crushing reduces the cocoa beans to a fine paste.

   Similargrinding, pressing, compression

5. 5
   noununcountable

   A former method of execution in which heavy weights were piled on a victim until death.

   The court condemned the silent prisoner to crushing beneath iron and stone.

   The judge ordered death by crushing, and the prisoner lay under the loaded boards for two days before he died.

   Similarpressing

6. 6
   noununcountableplural

   Material that has been reduced to small fragments through crushing.

   The contractor ordered several tons of crushing for the driveway base.

   Loose crushing covered the surface of the new running track.

   Note

   When it names the material, the word is at home in the plural. Oilseed crushings, the crushed seed itself, are the typical case. A singular mass use also occurs, as in a load of crushing for a driveway. Still, the plural is the safer choice when you mean the product rather than the act of crushing.

7. 7
   noununcountable

   The process of pressing harvested sugarcane to extract the juice used to make sugar.

   Each season the crushing of the cane lasts several intense months.

   Engineers improved the crushing to draw more juice from every stalk.

   Similarmilling, pressing

   Note

   Sugar milling turns the general noun into a term of the trade. The crushing is the stage where harvested cane passes through heavy rollers to release its juice. It comes first in the milling process, before clarification and evaporation. Harriet W. Daly uses the word in this planting setting in Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory (1887).

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