decking

Pluraldeckings

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The material (usually planks of wood or composite) from which the flat raised surface of a deck is built.

   The contractor recommended composite decking because it resists moisture better than wood.

   They laid fresh cedar decking across the newly framed structure.

   Similarplanking, boards

   Note

   The word reaches well beyond garden timber. Railway Magazine in 1949 calls the heavy flagstones laid across a viaduct its decking, and scaffolding has decking too: the platform engineers stand on while they work. It serves as a mass noun (composite decking, stone decking) and also as a count noun for a single such surface, with the plural deckings.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of deck.

   The volunteers were decking the town square in lights for the festival.

   Decking the stage in flowers, the crew prepared for the evening ceremony.

   Note

   One spelling carries several quite different verbs. The festive one means adorning, as in decking a square in lights or decking someone in finery. In casual speech it can mean flooring someone with a single punch, and card players use it for leaving an opponent with nothing left to draw. The less common shipbuilder's sense, fitting a vessel with a deck, sits closest to the noun for deck material.

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